Apologies for the previous abortive message! See below for what I meant to send. 

Please see below for details of a tender for transcription work on the Caldwell Nurseries Project.

Any queries should be directed to Patricia Alexander at [log in to unmask] who can provide further details including images of the relevant documents. The closing date for the tender is 19th July.    

Regards
Mary McKenzie

TENDER FOR THE SUPPLY OF DATABASE TRANSCRIPTION SERVICES 
OF SEED AND PLANT ORDERS FROM LEDGERS BELONGING TO 
CALDWELLS NURSERIES, KNUTSFORD.
Background
1.1	Cheshire Gardens Trust  aims to promote the awareness, use, appreciation and understanding of local parks, gardens and designed landscapes. It promotes their creation and seeks their conservation and sustainable management, encourages their care by local communities, and undertakes research and recording. 
1.2	Cheshire Gardens Trust seeks a suitably experienced contractor to undertake work to transcribe information from plant nursery ledgers dating, at earliest, from the 1790’s onto a computer database.
1.3	This project has come into being due to the interest and concern of the Cheshire Gardens Trust to share and record aspects of local horticultural heritage. The Trust has been aware of the existence of early nursery ledgers belonging to Caldwell’s Nurseries, established in Knutsford in the 1780’s and trading for over 200 years. The ledgers contain detailed information of historic interest.  
1.4	The first documented plant nurseries were in the London area and, in a few cases, can be traced back to the beginning of the 17th century. Outside London surviving records indicate that the earliest major nurseries supplying general stock were mainly in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. In NW England there is no trace of the trade before 1750. In Cheshire, the Knutsford Nursery is the earliest known and was run by John Nickson, who was described as ‘of Over Knutsford, Gardiner’ in 1759. The nursery was well established by 1784 when Bailey’s British Directory lists John Nixon as Botanist, Gardener and Seedsman. The Caldwell family entered the Knutsford nursery business in around 1780 when William Caldwell worked an apprenticeship at the nurseries. He was also running the family nursery at Knowsley in Lancashire, which was subsequently sold in 1796, when he became a partner at the Knutsford nursery following John Nixon’s retirement. Six successive William Caldwells continued to run the nursery until its final closure in 1991. 
1.5	Cheshire and Chester Archives and Local Studies (CALS) based at Duke Street, Chester (tel: 01244 602 574) has been granted indefinite loan, by the Caldwell family, of seventeen Caldwell nursery business ledgers and nursery catalogues from the late 18th to the early 20th Century. These ledgers offer a rare insight into the business of an early regional plant nursery supplying plants countrywide and abroad, as well as to great estates in Cheshire and local customers. 

Tender requirements
2.1	Cheshire Gardens Trust wish to obtain detailed computer database transcriptions of eight of the Caldwell nursery ledgers which contain detailed records of seed and plant orders supplied to each customer. The relevant ledgers are located at CALS and have the following accession numbers:
	DDX 363/2: 1790 – 1795: “William Caldwell, Nurserymen, Knowsley”: details of plants supplied to each customer.
	DDX 363/3: 1794 – 1797:  Gives details and cost of plants supplied to each customer.
	DDX 363/6: 1789 – 1795:  Inscribed “Order Book”.  Gives details and cost of plants supplied to each customer.
	DDX 363/7: 1795 – 1797:  Half of book = “Trees Sold” 1795 – 1797. Other half Feb 1812 – 1815: Costs.
	DDX 363/8: 1820 – 1824:  Day book: orders and values. No customer ledger.
	DDX 363/9: 1828 – 1833:  Day book: orders and values. No customer ledger.
	DDX 363/10: 1833 – 1837:  Day book: orders and values. No customer ledger.
	D7802: Feb1914 – August 1914: Day book: orders and values.
2.2	Most of the above ledgers are about 450 pages in length, giving a total of approximately 3,600 pages of information each with approximately 50 order lines per page. This creates a potential resource of approximately 180,000 order lines of nursery stock spanning the time period 1790 – 1837, and February – August 1914. Examples of several pages of the ledgers are attached to this tender document, however it is the responsibility of the contractor to familiarise themselves with each of the ledgers and to establish the number of records held in each. This may require a visit to the Records Office at Chester, and it is assumed that the contractor has undertaken this prior to bidding for this work. Appointments to view the ledgers should be made in advance by contacting Cheshire Archives and Local Studies.  (tel: 01244 602 574).
2.3	Cheshire Gardens Trust will supply the successful contractor with:
	PC compatible colour scanned images of each page of the eight ledgers provided on  CD\DVD for the work to be undertaken at the contractor’s own place of work;
	a PC compatible database to undertake the data transcription from the ledgers; 
	one day of training in the utility of the database; and
	the contact details of a representative of the Cheshire Gardens Trust to allow the contractor to seek help and advice, as required, throughout the duration of the contract.
2.4	The contractor will supply:
	A PC compatible computer running Windows, with broadband internet connection, CD\DVD drive and adequate hard drive capacity to undertake this work.
Database Structure

2.4	The database structure will minimise repetition of input by the contractor through the creation of a Customer Table and a Plant Inventory Table, each of which can be added to as new records are encountered in the original ledgers. The structures of the Customer and Plant Inventory Tables are as follows:


CUSTOMER TABLE:					Customer name
						Alternative Customer name
						Customer address
	Type of property (private estate, local authority)
				

PLANT INVENTORY TABLE:			Plant name Latin / English name 
Alternative Plant name
Plant type (vegetable, fruit, tree, shrub, herbaceous, herb, rose, sundry item etc)
Plant size (height in feet and inches, seed, transplant etc)
Plant unit of sale (packet, item, ounce, pint, quart etc)
Plant unit cost (£ s d)

2.5	All data for the Customer and Plant Inventory tables, with the exception of Type of Property and Plant Type, can be derived directly from the ledgers. It is the responsibility of the contractor to populate these tables including Type of Property and Plant Type field, and it is essential that the contractor has sufficient botanical / horticultural knowledge to undertake this aspect of the work.

2.6	The contractor will input data from each order line of a ledger by Customer Order, working systematically through each page of each selected ledger to create an Orders Table which contains the following fields:

ORDERS TABLE: 	Ledger volume - Accession number
Customer (derived from a dropdown list of the Customer Table plus option for contractor to add a new customer)
						Order date
Plant name (derived from a drop down list from Plant Inventory Table plus option for contractor to add a new plant)
Plant size (derived from a drop down list from Plant Inventory Table plus option for contractor to add new plant size)
Plant Unit Cost (£ s d) (derived from a drop down list from Plant Inventory plus option for contractor to add new)
						Delivery instructions
						Total order cost (£ s d)

2.7	The contractor will be responsible for initial population of the Customer and Plant Inventory tables which will be undertaken as the order is entered into the Orders table. As work progresses through a ledger, most customers and plants will have been entered and will be available to select within the drop down tables of the Orders Table.

2.8	The Customer and Plant Inventory tables both contain fields to accommodate ‘Alternative Customer name” and ‘Alternative Plant name’.  The ledgers illustrate that the spelling of plant names varied over time (e.g. collyflower to cauliflower) and that some customers changed their names over the time period of the ledgers (e.g. Lord Leicester to Baron de Tabley). Use of these fields by the contractor will accommodate such changes.
Data Verification
3.1	The contractor will be required, at regular intervals during the contract, to submit a copy of the populated database to a representative of the Cheshire Gardens Trust, to allow checking of data for accuracy of transcription. A copy of the data will be submitted at the following intervals:
	On completion of ten pages of the initial ledger; and
	on completion of every subsequent 40 pages of each ledger.
3.2	On completion of each stage of checking for accuracy of data input, Cheshire Gardens Trust reserves the right to ask the contractor to amend incorrectly entered data. Should the contractor fail to amend incorrectly entered data, of if the representatives from the Trust do not see any marked improvement in the subsequent quality of the contractor’s data entry, the Trust reserves the right to terminate the contract. 
Contractor Experience
4.1	The contractor will provide evidence of relevant experience in this type of work, and in particular, of experience in reading old manuscripts, transcribing data from manuscripts, and experience in working with computer databases. A working botanical/horticultural knowledge of plants would be considered advantageous.
Anticipated date of contract
5.1	It is anticipated that the contract will be let by Cheshire Gardens Trust in early 2011.
Payment terms
6.1 	On completion of 25% of the work, the contractor may invoice for 25% of the contract price. On completion of 50% of the work, the contractor may invoice for a further 25% of the contract price.  On completion of 100% of the work, the contractor may invoice for a further 40%.  A retention of 10% will be paid once the database has been fully checked and tested and any alterations, adjustments, additions made as necessary.
Submission of tender
7.1	A tender price should be submitted on the attached 3 page form, on or before 12 noon on Monday 19th July, 2010.  Submission of a tender in any other format will not be considered by Cheshire Gardens Trust.  Other documents, such as curriculum vitae or evidence of relevant experience of the person(s) undertaking the work, may also be submitted with this form.
7.2	Should the contractor have any questions about this tender document or the contract  during the tender period , please address them to:
Patricia A Alexander			Tel:	01743 872084
Wilberry Cottage			Email:	[log in to unmask]
1 The Common
Bayston Hill, Shrewsbury
Shropshire, SY3 OEA


Criteria for awarding of contract
8.1	Tender submissions will be assessed by Cheshire Gardens Trust on the basis of the following range of criteria:
	Price;
	contractor’s previous experience of this type of work; and
	proposed date of submission of completed work by the contractor.

8.2	Cheshire Gardens Trust reserves the right not to award this contract, and also to award it by dividing the work between more than one contractor.

 

TENDER FOR THE SUPPLY OF DATABASE TRANSCRIPTION SERVICES 
OF SEED AND PLANT ORDERS FROM LEDGERS BELONGING TO 
CALDWELLS NURSERIES, KNUTSFORD.

Company Name	:	………………………………………....

Company Address:	………………………………………….
				
………………………………………….
				
………………………………………….
				
………………………………………….

Post Code:			………………………………………….


Person 
undertaking the work: 	………………………………………..


Telephone:			………………………………………….


Email address:		………………………………………….


VAT number:		………………………………………….


 

I offer to undertake the transcription work of the Caldwell Ledgers detailed below onto a computer database for the following amounts:
		
Ledger volume	Transcription cost	VAT	Total inc. VAT	Date of anticipated completion (if commenced on 01/01/2011)
DDX 363/2
				
DDX 363/3
 				
DDX 363/6
				
DDX 363/7
 				
DDX 363/8
				
DDX 363/9 
				
DDX 363/10
				
D7802
				
TOTAL
				




Name and contact details of 2 referees:

……………………………………   ……………………………………………
……………………………….......   ……………………………………………
…………………………………...    …………………………………………...
…………………………………...    …………………………………………...
…………………………………...    …………………………………………...


Signed: 	……………………………………………..

Name:	……………………………………………..

Position:	……………………………………………..

Date:		……………………………………………..

Cheshire Gardens Trust reserves the right not to award this contract, and also to award it by dividing the work between more than one contractor.

Please submit this offer to undertake the work, as described, by 12 noon on Monday 19th July, 2010 to:

Joy Uings

Cheshire Gardens Trust

26 Sandford Road

Sale

Cheshire

M33 2PS

Email: [log in to unmask] 


Tenders will be accepted as email attachments. 

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