Managed Services Contract – Medical Biochemistry & Immunology

Description

It is considered that the requirements of 72(1)(b) are met in relation to the extension which has become necessary such that a change of contractor cannot be made for economic or technical reasons such as requirements of interchangeability or interoperability with existing equipment, services or installations procured under the initial procurement, or (ii)would cause significant inconvenience or substantial duplication of costs. The technical and economic reasons are set out below Technical issues involve: - LIMS System - Changing the LIMS is a major undertaking at any time and to do this as the same time as changing our major equipment platforms would not have allowed us to guarantee a patient safe service – the LIMS change cannot be delayed because of infrastructure issues which means the supplier cannot support the current system after the spring of 2026 giving a firm end point on the current system. - The original contract award commenced in 2022 but did not progress due to various issues so was re-awarded in 2023 which meant all the work undertaken in 2022 was lost and we have needed to enter into an accelerated period of testing and evaluation due to the firm deadline of the spring of 2026, this is taking a significant amount of departmental resources to the point that key staff are having to undertake overtime to complete the work, these are the same individuals required to contribute to the tender specification. - With the accelerated process of acceptance testing the plan to go live by early 2026 when there will be a further period of testing minor defects are repaired. - Analytical Equipment - To currently change the current analytical system to a new unknown system would place significant pressure on the team who are currently fully engaged in the testing and validation of the new Laboratory Information System – to implement a new system would require full technical and clinical evaluation against the current equipment for all assays including: - Full Verification and validation of each assay - Re-baselining patient on specific assays - Full linearity checking of each assay - Carry over and cross over experiences - Technical retraining of the staff during this period of high pressure - Experience has shown this can take up to 12 months of several senior staff full time – these are the same staff currently testing the laboratory information system while simple replacement to the same analytical system only required simple correlation checking as all other parameters have been checked (WA Ref:148722)