Stay calm and watch the carry-on

The proposed launch of a £30bn contractors framework could normally be expected to set pulses racing in any industry, with everybody keen to learn the details of the procurement process. When it is being launched by the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) however everybody stops holding their breath.

A previous CCS attempt to launch a major framework started some five years ago, a £2.9bn consultancy framework that was hailed as a flagship but ended up a fiasco, sunk by a legal challenge on behalf of a failed bidder objecting to the way the winner was selected. The framework was eventually launched four years late, with government departments happily carrying on without it in the meantime; some might be continuing to do so.

Blame for some of the delays were put on the scale and complexity of the framework, which was for less than £3bn. Fingers are crossed that the CCS learned enough to now be able to manage procurement of a programme some ten times larger.

The four-year framework, which could be extended by three years, would be the biggest in the UK, open to clients across central government departments, NHS Trusts and local authorities for construction, refurbishment and demolition work.

Some major projects are to be undertaken under the new framework says the CCS. If they depend on the framework to go ahead the outlook might not be too good. But the chances must be that departments will go ahead with spending plans they regard as crucial.

Industry appetites for this framework are apparently high, despite the consultancy framework track record, with 90 companies surveyed saying they would be interested in working under it. On the plus side, a £420m infrastructure management framework did get launched late last year and bidding has been invited recently for a £12bn facilities management framework.

The CCS says the new framework is to support delivery of the government’s construction strategy, which is to be revealed later this year; whatever is left of that following the recent abandonment of the Infrastructure Commission by high profile members reportedly frustrated at civil service inability to achieve much.

Less than helpfully, the CCS chief executive Malcolm Harrison has also resigned, and will go to work for the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply from July, after less than two years in the post. The organisation, which is an executive agency of the Cabinet Office, was itself only formed in 2013 to coordinate the purchase of common goods and services for departments. A key aim was to disaggregate some large contracts and open the market to smaller firms.

Mr Harrison had to oversee a scaling back of these ambitions when it became obvious that the civil service juggernaut was not to be easily turned from its traditional ways of working. Creating frameworks on the scale now envisaged might seem to be pulling in the opposite direction from the disaggregation policies that the CCS was formed to promote, which is of course all in the best traditions of public sector procurement. A work hungry industry keenly awaits the outcome.

Nick Barrett
Editor