Published date: 10 August 2018

This notice was replaced on 21 January 2019

This notice does not contain the most up-to-date information about this procurement. The most recent notice is:

Awarded contract (published 21 January 2019)

Closed opportunity - This means that the contract is currently closed. The buying department may be considering suppliers that have already applied, or no suitable offers were made.


Contract summary

Industry

  • Environmental services - 90700000

Location of contract

Any region

Value of contract

£0

Procurement reference

tender_174857/695427

Published date

10 August 2018

Closing date

16 October 2018

Contract start date

12 November 2018

Contract end date

30 November 2019

Contract type

Service contract

Procedure type

Open procedure (below threshold)

Any interested supplier may submit a tender in response to an opportunity notice.

This procedure can be used for procurements below the relevant contract value threshold.

Contract is suitable for SMEs?

Yes

Contract is suitable for VCSEs?

Yes


Description

The recently published 25 Year Environment Plan sets out Defra's long term approach to managing and protecting our natural environment. The Plan acknowledges that we currently lack sufficient data to understand the current status of our soils and the need to invest in soil monitoring. Traditional national soil monitoring (i.e. sample collections on a grid or stratified random basis, across the country) has provided valuable contextual information, but , for considerable resource input currently only provides national scale statistics which are not adequate to answer many of today's policy questions. Therefore, recognising the importance of this type of soil monitoring, the purpose of this research is to identify innovative and cost-effective ways of delivering the required additional information to support policy and enhance existing monitoring programmes.

The main aims of this research project are outlined below:

- To identify the current and anticipated policy questions in England and Wales that require an understanding of the changing health of our soils;

- To develop an innovative, cost effective, monitoring solution to improve our understanding of soil health status across England and Wales;

- To develop a robust soil monitoring framework/methodology which collates and integrates multiple data sources at the appropriate scales required for answering key soil health policy questions;

- To develop a flexible soil monitoring framework/methodology which can allow further data inputs to meet future policy/end user needs;

- To provide evidence to inform the development of appropriate soil metrics and a new environmental land management scheme, as set out in the Future Farming Command Paper and the 25 year environment Plan.

- To provide evidence to help co-ordinate and embed best practice for sustainable management of soil resources in Wales, as part of the natural resource management policy framework.


More information

Links

Additional text

Please note that Defra procurement uses an E-tendering system for Procurement activities. This is currently provided by Bravo Solutions. To access appropriate tendering and contractual documents, please access the E-Tendering portal at https://defra.bravosolutions.co.uk, ensuring that your registration includes "Defra". If you have any problems with this system, please contact Bravo on their telephone helpline number 0800 368 4850 or by emailing them at help@bravosolution.co.uk.


About the buyer

Address

DEFRA
London
SW1P 3JR
England

Telephone

00

Email

network.procurement@defra.gsi.gov.uk