Avanti West Coast, Service Quality Regime (SQR) procurement - 2025

This procurement process is being advertised and run by Avanti West Coast on its own behalf and on behalf of the successor operator of the rail passenger transport services in respect of West Coast Franchise. That successor operator will be a public sector company, is expected to be a wholly owned subsidiary of DfT OLR Holdings Limited and will be ultimately owned by the Secretary of State for Transport. The date for transfer of the current operations to the successor operator is not yet confirmed. Where the transfer is completed before contract award under this procurement process, the successor operator may elect (but will not be obliged) to carry on with this procurement process in place of Avanti West Coast, by taking on the role of contracting entity from the date of completion of the transfer (with this notice and all other procurement documents to be interpreted accordingly). Where the transfer is not yet completed by the time of contract award, contractual rights may be included in the contractual arrangements to enable transfer to the successor operator. Bidders should note that this procurement process (if ongoing), or any awarded contract, may be included in a transfer scheme made by the Secretary of State under section 12 of the Railways Act 2005, or the transfer may be effected outside of, or separate from, such a scheme. If transfer takes place before the contract award the successor operator shall assume all the rights of the Client set out in this document. All references to Avanti West Coast shall be deemed to refer to the successor operator for the purposes of this procurement and the successor operator shall be entitled to continue or terminate this procurement as if it was involved from the outset.

The Pre Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ) will be evaluated in line with the criteria stated within the PQQ. Following the evaluation of the PQQ responses, the Client will shortlist the Applicants it will invite to tender in accordance with the terms of the PQQ. The Client reserves the right to limit the number of Applicants that are invited to tender to a maximum of five Applicants. Only Applicants that score a "Pass" for all non-qualitatively scored questions in this PQQ will be considered and places will be awarded in order of highest to lowest score. The client reserves the right, in its absolute discretion, to invite more Applicants if there is a tie in the scores between two or more Applicants for the final place.