Repair and maintenance services of central heating. Repair and maintenance services of checking apparatus. GHA carries out work to gas installations under a number of separate contract arrangements. The work includes new boiler-only and full heating installations to existing houses, full heating installations within new build projects, and servicing/repair of existing heating installations to houses, offices and shops. On a smaller scale, it also includes installation of or servicing/repair of commercial boilers supplying group heating schemes.

In each case the contractor who carries out the work is required to check and certify that the work has been carried out so as to comply with the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations.

In order to satisfy itself that the contractor has properly carried out the work and has checked/certified it in accordance with the Regulations, GHA engages an independent auditor to "check the checkers". That audit service is the subject of this procurement.

GHA aims to carry out approximately 1 700 to 1 800 audits annually (representing approximately 4 % of the heating systems/boilers installed or serviced) whilst retaining sufficient flexibility to increase or decrease the number of audits to reflect audit findings or fluctuations in the number of GHA properties.

In addition to the core audit service, the contract will require the service provider to implement a prescribed reporting regime, to collate data in a prescribed format, and to provide benchmarking information comparing the gathered data to equivalent national data that the service providers gathers for itself or otherwise has access to.

The precise scope of the audit, the reporting regime and the benchmarking service will be set out in the tender documents which will be issued to those service providers who are selected to be invited to tender.

The independence of the service provider to act as auditor is a material element of this contract and therefore the tender documents will identify circumstances where GHA considers that a conflict of interest may arise and will set out GHA’s requirements for dealing with conflicts of interest.