Blackburn with Darwen and Bolton Council Select Commerce Decisions to Support the Procurement Process for Their Wave 5 and 6a BSF Programme

OXFORD, England, May 27 /PRNewswire/ --     Commerce Decisions, a leading provider of software and services to
support through-life procurement and delivery processes, has been selected by
the recently announced Blackburn with Darwen and Bolton Council partnership
to support the procurement process behind their multi-million pound
investment in schools.

Bolton and Blackburn with Darwen councils have teamed up to work together
on the next stages of The Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme
which was launched by the Government in 2004 and aims to rebuild or remodel
every secondary school across the UK. The partnership will focus on the task
of finding private sector partners to rebuild or remodel nine schools on
eight school sites in Blackburn with Darwen and 17 schools in Bolton.

"We selected Commerce Decisions to work with us on our BSF programme
based on their extensive experience of working on a wide range of BSF and BSF
related projects. The combination of their deep understanding and knowledge
about large and complex public sector procurements coupled with AWARD
software capabilities is very compelling. AWARD's rich functionality and
inherent flexibility will allow us to tailor it easily to match the BSF
Programme processes," commented Lisa Bibby, BSF Project Director, Blackburn
with Darwen Council.

The AWARD software is a collaborative web-based software solution
designed specifically to support the strategic procurement process from
Request for Information preparation, through proposal evaluation to
negotiation, delivery and post contract review. AWARD is proven to reduce
time to contract, improve value for money and reduce risk. It has been used
to support strategic procurements in a range of commercial and public sectors
including utilities, transport, local government, healthcare, aerospace and
defence. These procurements cover a broad range of activities including the
provision of schools, hospitals, transport and defence systems across Europe
and the US.

"We are very pleased to have been selected by the Blackburn and Darwen
and Bolton Council partnership to support them on their collaborative BSF
Programme. We know from all the experience we have gained working on numerous
BSF projects that these are very challenging procurements with complex
competitive dialogue phases. AWARD software has repeatedly proven itself as
being more than capable of supporting projects of this nature," observed John
Thompson, CEO, Commerce Decisions.

Web: http://www.commercedecisions.com