How to win: 003415 - Preliminary Market Engagement (PME) for Digital Bus Passes (Home to School Transport)

About this contract

Durham County Council (DCC) are looking to explore a digital alternative to physical Home to School Transport bus passes to reduce costs, improve efficiency, strengthen fraud controls, and enhance user experience. The Council currently issues 7,000 physical passes involving manual processing, printing, and posting. This creates delays, requires high admin effort, and offers limited real-time visibility over eligibility, pass status, and usage. We are engaging the market to understand available digital solutions, technologies, and indicative costs to inform a future business case. Scope • Digital bus passes via mobile devices. • Verification (visual/scannable) including offline options. • Real‑time activation/deactivation. • Technical capability to interface with other digital systems eg. Flexiroute. • Fraud‑prevention features. • Hybrid digital/physical options for users who are digitally excluded. • Pass lifecycle management, including issuing, suspension, reinstatement, replacement, expiry, and renewal where applicable. • Support for policy‑driven business rules (e.g. eligibility changes or temporary entitlement). This notice forms part of our preliminary market engagement, offer

How to win contracts like this

• ✓Answer against the marking scheme, not the question text — Durham County Council scores each response, so map your evidence to the published criteria and weightings.
• ✓Lead with evidenced capability and social value — for goods work these usually outweigh price.
• ✓Show recent, comparable delivery: name similar goods contracts you've delivered for public bodies, with measurable outcomes.
• ✓Start early: it closes 29 May 2026 and a strong bid takes iteration.

BidWriter drafts your responses from your company profile, scores them against the marking scheme, and tracks your whole pipeline. Free to start — no card needed.

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