Our news pages are full these days with stories about public sector procurement. The public sector has always been crucial as a client for construction, but changes in procurement have made it increasingly so.
Much work is now let as large frameworks of one sort or another and success or failure on these bids can have massive impact on companies’ futures; no surprise then that the process of arriving at decisions gets put under the microscope by the losers and legal challenges will result if all was not as it should be. Bidding costs companies a lot of money and legal challenges are expensive all round – plus the cost to the country of delays in the provision of the affected infrastructure or services.
A lot of head scratching has gone on in Whitehall and Downing Street in recent years about what to do. New procurement bodies have been established, civil servants sent on courses to boost their procurement skills, procurement reform is being enshrined in legislation as we see in Scotland, where one suggestion made at the consultation stage of the Procurement Reform Bill was to unbundle the framework type contracts to give smaller companies a chance.
There is no clarity yet on what an efficient public sector procurement service would look like, although there is no shortage of advice on what the problems are. The latest in a long line of reports from various bodies on the topic though at least points the way towards one possible future that will strike a chord with many construction professionals.
It comes from the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) which suggests that management of large project procurement could be improved by adopting an engineering approach.
In Public projects and procurement in the UK the RAE makes a good start by saying that the public sector should become an ‘intelligent client’, implying of course that it isn’t already, so no arguments there perhaps. RAE also thinks that contracts should be broken up to let smaller companies play a more active role. Those responsible for procuring large projects need to have a good understanding of the sector that they are commissioning from, says RAE.
Tender evaluation should be based on life cycle considerations and not just bare, up-front cost. The whole project team – client and suppliers alike – need to have the skills to understand the vision and purpose of the procurement.
By focusing on best practice on engineering projects government can, RAE argues, learn much that can be directly translated into procurement. Sir John Armitt, a member of the RAE panel that delivered the report and former chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority, said the success of the London Olympics was due to extensive planning, faultless execution and commissioning. The project timeline of seven years included two years for planning, four years construction and one rolex datejust m126231 0019 mens rolex calibre 2836 2813 year of commissioning trials and final logistics. Taking the RAE’s approach, procurement would become a key part of the overall planning process for a project and not just tacked on at the end once budget decisions have already been made. There is much in the RAE recommendations that the government would do well to listen to while it is considering procurement reform – but first it would need to be an intelligent client.
Nick Barrett
Editor