The Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) is inviting facilities management specialists to a bid for £2.9 billion worth of work. The Future Defence Infrastructure Services (FDIS) contracts will provide FM services across the UK defence estate.

“DIO is not only one of the largest providers of housing in the UK, with a stock of nearly 50,000 homes, it is also responsible for managing land and buildings across hundreds of diverse MOD sites,” said DIO’s Commercial Director, Jacqui Rock.

“We are pleased to be working with CCS to procure these contracts. We wants to make DIO easier to do business with and adopting this route to market is one of the ways that we hope to achieve this, while enabling us access to a wider, more diverse and increasingly resilient supply base,” he added.

This phase of the FDIS programme includes the procurement of new Hard FM arrangements for four Regional Prime contracts and five contracts that will replace the current National Housing Prime. With a collective value of £2.9 billion, excluding additional works, a later stage of the process will procure a National Training Management contract to replace the current National Training Estate Prime.

“This procurement is a part of the FM Marketplace, which is changing the way in which central government and the wider public sector procure their FM deals, delivering great value for the taxpayer. We are proud to be working in partnership with DIO and supporting delivery against their commercial strategy for common goods and services,” commented CCS Strategic Category Director – Buildings, Sam Ulyatt.

The award of places to suppliers on each of the framework lots is expected to be completed by the end of February 2019, with call off competitions starting soon afterwards.