WaND Consulting

Securing a post PFI Contract to maintain and upgrade DVLA’s estate

DVLA Planned & Reactive Engineering Services

Background

The Driver Vehicle Licencing Agency (DVLA) was nearing the end of a 20-year PFI contract to manage and maintain its estate and infrastructure. This estate consists of 12 buildings across three DVLA sites and provides workspace for the 6,000+ DVLA staff who administer 52 million driver records and collect £7bn vehicle excise duty annually. The PFI was being replaced with a 5 Year+ Hard FM Contract commencing in April 2025. Our client, a major FM entity, had long targeted the DVLA and engaged WaND to assist them in navigating the tender and provide perspective on the impact of a post PFI environment.

Challenges

Being one of the first of over 700 PFI’s to expire, the DVLA contract presented an early opportunity for the public and private sectors to engage with each other in the post PFI world. DVLA responded to this challenge by restructuring their estates function to navigate the procurement and manage contract delivery in this new world. For our client, the key Challenge was to generate confidence that they were the right entity for DVLA to partner with, demonstrating their collaborative behaviours and ability to bring transformation, assurance and innovation to service delivery. Particularly in the areas of ESG, where there was a completely different regulatory landscape to 20 years ago, mobilisation, where continuity of service post PFI was essential, and digital technology, where their expertise in remote maintenance could transform the way the DVLA buildings were managed.

How WaND provided support and outcome

We worked closely with our client’s bid management team, initially providing strategic support to help interpret the concerns and ambitions of the DVLA’s Estates Management Group. This advice influenced the key messaging within the technical responses. Our Simulated Reviews, undertaken across all technical response, then helped ensure our client’s pedigree was clearly articulated. The procurement also involved scored presentations. We helped to prepare our client by undertaking a mock session, providing an independent assessment on content, flow and delivery. In January 2025, the DVLA announced our client had successfully secured this £82m contract. As part of the contract our client will deliver decarbonisation through installing ground source heat pumps, contributing towards the DVLA’s Greening Government Commitments. A key feature we helped to emphasise within the tender response.

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Our Partners

We have a number of informal strategic partnering arrangements with other sector specialists and often work alongside them when supporting a client as our services are complementary. These include Cargyll, Akerlof, Electi, SecureConstruct and HLM Architects.