Maria’s leading role in shaping Sodexo’s Covid-19 test centres

“Exciting, engaging, exhausting and immensely rewarding,” This is how Maria Hazard sums up her involvement in a highly competitive tender to run a portfolio of Covid-19 test centres across the UK for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

Maria has been in business development for Sodexo since 2011, initially in the Corporate Services sector, moving to Government in 2015 and into her current role as solutions director for Healthcare in September 2020. Her wealth of experience and success in tendering for public sector contracts made her the natural choice to head up this high-profile bid, which saw Sodexo successfully become the largest provider in the country, operating 30% of all UK test centres.  

Maria is one of Sodexo’s most revered and experienced business development professionals, known for her deep understanding of clients’ needs and the time and commitment she invests in ensuring Sodexo’s solutions are bespoke designed to be 100% relevant to requirements. 

“My experience is in multi-site, multi-service facilities management contracts, and in my Sodexo career to date I’ve worked to help secure partnerships with HMRC, the Ministry of Justice, the Scottish Parliament and Avon & Somerset Police Services,” says Maria. 

So although proficient with complex and challenging bids, Maria admits the test centre tender required her – and the 50-strong Sodexo team working alongside her – to step up into new territory. 

“When Covid hit in March 2020, the Government approached a number of suppliers, including Sodexo, to rapidly deploy a number of test centres, often with just a few days’ notice,” says Maria. “So we have been involved with the response from a very early stage.” 

As the demands of the pandemic grew, the DHSC announced a procurement exercise to review the number of service providers, to ensure value for money for the taxpayer and best practice across the portfolio. 

At the time the tender was announced, Sodexo teams were already running services at over 200 fixed and mobile sites, and the contract presented the chance to retain that estate and expand into more regions. But it was by no means a straightforward project. 

“No-one had worked on a contract that size before. It’s the most challenging bid I’ve worked on in my career,” says Maria. “On a scale of 1 to 10, it was 20. There were hundreds of documents to prepare and only an eight-week timeline to bring it all together. Because of the nature of the pandemic, the requirements of the bid changed frequently too, and that presented complexities with the service offering and trying to put our costing model together.” 

The bid team involved experts from multiple internal teams including commercial, finance, risk, creative, health & safety and human resources, and they met via Teams every day during the eight week timeframe. 

“I realised the weight of responsibility at the time, and that this was going to be a new experience for us all,” says Maria. “Trying to put together a bid remotely was tough, with some members of the team navigating home schooling or looking after vulnerable family members. But there was a shared feeling that we were doing something of real benefit to society; that we were all in it together.

"I’m naturally an upbeat person, as a leader I think you have to be that way."

Maria is widely respected for this ability to inspire and motivate others, her leadership skills and insightful decision making under pressure. Together, the team focused on presenting the DHSC with a solution that pointed to areas where Sodexo could ‘do things differently.’ 

“We wanted our bid to answer all the requirements but also tell a compelling story that focussed on the human aspect of test centres,” says Maria. “Flexibility was key for the DHSC and we could show we had delivered that in the existing test centre estate, able to set up centres within 24 hours and flex the service and staffing levels up and down depending on demand. 

“We employed many people from across other parts of our business who may have otherwise been furloughed, and set up a counselling service and a bid-for-shift system where people could work hours that suited their own – often challenging – personal circumstances. Looking after our staff was a priority we were keen to bring out.” 

Sodexo’s record on infection protection was also a key point of difference, to ensure the safety for those coming into the test centres. “Having a positive impact on communities was important,” says Maria. “From customer service training to mapping out the patient journey, our aim is to make members of the public feel at ease in what can be a daunting experience for many.” 

In July 2021, the DHSC announced that it had awarded Sodexo a 12-month contract (with an option to extend for six months) for an additional 121 fixed and mobile test centres, to build on the established 202. It was an incredible result for Maria and the team. “At the time it was all consuming. It was intense, but incredibly satisfying to win. But in the nature of our business, once the bid is submitted, you quickly move on to the next and I then led the bid for the Assisted Testing contract, where we were placed first and were awarded all four regions.” 

After playing such a critical role in building Sodexo’s test centre portfolio, Maria now finally finds she has some space to switch her attention to the wider Healthcare business. She has been out talking to teams across the hospital estate and is planning to spend a period working with the frontline at Royal Stoke Hospital. “I want to experience our service delivery first hand so I can bring this knowledge to the business development team and use it to review our value proposition, solutions and services to ensure our offers meet the exact needs of future clients and prospects.”