NHS Procurement Guide for Hospital Solar

Why frameworks are the default route

NHS Trusts can run a full open tender for a solar installation, but almost none do. Public sector frameworks pre-qualify suppliers for capability, financial standing, and compliance, which collapses procurement from six months of OJEU-style process into 8–16 weeks. For solar specifically, the commonly used vehicles are the Crown Commercial Service Decarbonisation Framework (a dynamic purchasing system covering on-site renewables), NHS Shared Business Services construction and consultancy frameworks, and the ESPO framework used widely across the public estate. All include vetted solar specialists, and a Trust's procurement team will already hold access agreements for at least one of them.

Framework procurement matters for funding as well as speed. A PSDS award comes with a spend deadline, and the application itself must show a credible delivery programme. An application that says "framework direct award, contractor identified, programme agreed" scores better than one that says "procurement route to be determined" — and it removes the single most common cause of grant under-spend.

Direct award or mini-competition?

Direct award appoints a named supplier from the framework without further competition, where framework terms permit. It is fastest — typically 4–8 weeks to contract — and appropriate where a feasibility study has already defined the scheme, where timescales are grant-driven, or where a supplier holds specific site knowledge from earlier phases. Mini-competition invites several framework suppliers to bid against the Trust's specification. It takes 10–16 weeks, suits larger or multi-site schemes, and gives the Trust market-tested pricing to evidence value for money in the business case. Both are legitimate; the mistake is defaulting to mini-competition for a 300 kW community hospital scheme where the competition costs more in programme delay than it could ever save in price.

What to evaluate — beyond price per kW

Hospital solar bids should be scored on the things that go wrong in hospitals, not just capital cost. A sensible evaluation matrix weights: HTM 03-01 infection control methodology and evidence of live-site healthcare delivery; HTM 06-01 electrical design competence and Authorising Engineer (Electrical) engagement; DBS clearance coverage across the install workforce; yield modelling quality (PVSyst files the Trust can independently verify, not summary spreadsheets); warranty structure, including insurance-backed workmanship cover; and the O&M offer — monitoring, response times, and panel cleaning regimes priced over 25 years rather than left to a future negotiation. Price matters, but a £20,000 saving on capex is poor compensation for a contractor who has never worked above a live ward.

PFI estates: check the contract first

Roughly 100 UK hospitals operate under PFI contracts, and on those sites procurement starts with the contract, not the framework. The questions that determine everything: who pays the energy bill, who owns roof alterations, and how does the PFI agreement allocate benefit from energy savings? Where the PFI partner carries energy risk, the savings flow to them, and the workable structure is usually co-investment with savings shared under a renegotiated value-for-money arrangement. We have worked through both Trust-pays and partner-pays structures; the procurement route follows from that analysis, and skipping it is the most expensive shortcut in hospital solar.

Where we fit

We are accustomed to framework delivery — direct award and mini-competition — and we support Trusts pre-procurement too: feasibility studies and PSDS applications structured so any compliant contractor could deliver them, keeping the Trust's procurement position clean. The PSDS funding page covers the grant mechanics, the process page shows the full delivery timeline, and our costs page gives the benchmark figures evaluation panels find useful when sense-checking bids.