We spend so long looking outwards at the wider environment for our key issues. But are we missing the elephant in the room? Is Procurement actually one of Procurement’s worst enemies?

For anyone who has experience working in public sector procurement, the strictures of the rules and regulations are well known and often highly frustrating. So it would have come as a surprise to many when former UK Prime Minister Theresa May announced a plan that would ‘free the NHS’ from Government procurement rules.

Cue many cornflakes being choked upon around the UK upon hearing this news. And then numerous procurement professionals taking a very keen interest in where the story was going next. 

After all, if you were to speak to any procurement professional with experience of working in the public sector (and their client departments), you would probably get a fair picture pretty quickly of the key barrier, hindrance, ball and chain impacting their work. Administration, bureaucracy, paperwork, regulations – take your pick. Once you enter a public sector procurement process, it’ll be a while before you emerge out the other side. 

That’s not to say that these are bad things. The regulations help to bring openness, honesty and transparency to the process. They also make it fully auditable and able to be used as a shield against bad practice and spurious challenges. That said, there isn’t a single procurement professional who wouldn’t love to drop the regulations once in a while.

Who wouldn’t love a bit of extra ‘freedom’ to spend money in a more effective and efficient way. 

Worst Enemies – Self-Inflicted Pain 

Putting aside the UK and EU-wide regulations for a minute as an unavoidable consequence of public procurement (Prime Ministerial intervention pending…), we can turn a lens on the processes that procurement has set up for itself. Sure, the regulations are a pain, but they’re part and parcel of doing the job. What isn’t is the self-inflicted pain of all the additional administration that procurement loads on itself. 

Take a closer look at the processes in your organisation. Are they as lean as they can be? Do you have a set of toolkit documents that you can use for all your process? Or are you mired in repetitive documents that are all required, but aren’t adding any value to the process? 

This additional burden not only extends an already lengthy process, but also curtails the valuable time of your procurement professionals. Want a happy procurement team? Then it’s value and management, not process and admin. 

In previous articles, I’ve outlined both the importance of time management, but also the use of collaborative frameworks and other procurement routes that can be used to help use this precious time more effectively. What is more problematic, however, are the timescales attached to the procurement process that is specific to the individual organisation. 

Tender regulations aside, we’re talking about the additional time procurement builds into its own process that is potentially avoidable. Think internal approval processes, report writing and flurries of emails that could be taken care of with a short conversation or a really good document storage system. 

Strategies and Stakeholders 

Beyond this is a perceived acceptance by procurement of being strung along by Client department and stakeholders. Not just in taking on additional tasks for these groups, but not being strong enough to push back when things clearly aren’t progressing.

This is not an open invitation to undermine stakeholder relationships or burn bridges. But make it clear that a single stakeholder’s requirements are not the only thing that a Procurement Officer is working on, let alone responsible for. 

By having this bit of extra support for pushing back on project teams that are dragging their feet with important information or documents, and moving on to other projects that are set to go. Send someone to the back of the queue when they’re not ready more than once and they’ll get the message.

Finally, it’s worth considering how procurement chooses to set itself up strategically. Strategic structuring such as Category Management or embedding in project teams all have their pros and cons (enough for another article entirely). But stick too rigidly to any structure and it can cause issues. From imbalances in work levels across a department, to pigeon-holing your team members into one area or commodity, they’re all things that need to be considered on an on-going basis, not just once every 2-3 years. 

Adapt and Survive 

Not to get too Darwinian, but if procurement continues down some of these paths, it’s not too much of a stretch to say that we could see the profession as we know it cease to be. Market environments, technology and even organisations continue to grow and adapt organically. So why does procurement keep tripping itself up with rigid structures and tying itself up in bureaucracy and red tape? 

While I don’t advocate a ‘free-for-all’ approach to procurement, or believe that fully unstructured departments can work effectively all the time, there are changes that could be made to aid the survival of procurement in the long term. 

As a hero of mine once said, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Quit being part of the problem.” 

Let’s stop ignoring the elephant in the room and take a long, hard look at ourselves. Procurement has enough challenges to contend with without adding more on itself. It’s where platforms such as Procurious are such a valuable tool. By talking our problems out, we can find collective solutions to the benefit of everyone. I, for one, am trying to do better and I’d love to work with you all to do more. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this article and others on the challenges facing public sector procurement. Leave your comments below, or get in touch directly, I’m always happy to chat!

Challenges and failures are all very well, but procurement only gets to develop if we talk about our wins. And we can all win if we learn from the best. 

The Queensferry Crossing is a magnificent structure and feat of design and engineering. At 1.7 miles (2.7km) long, the bridge is the longest three-tower, cable-stayed bridge in the world. The project features innovative design and forms part of a huge, 13.7 mile (22km) upgrade in infrastructure, including intelligent transport systems and emission reducing technology.

With a project budget of between £1.7-2.3 billion at the pre-tender stage for the Forth Replacement Crossing (including the Queensferry Crossing Bridge and the surrounding infrastructure works), it’s no surprise that procurement was at the heart of the success of the project. Without great procurement and strong contract management, there is little chance that this would have been delivered in the manner it was, and provided the savings it did too. The procurement process itself delivered significant savings resulting in a reduced estimated budget of £1.45-1.6 billion.

An Audit Scotland report into the project undertaken in 2017 determined that the project had indeed delivered value for money, not surprising given that at a total spend of £1.34 billion, it provided an 8-16 per cent saving on the budget at the start of construction.

A number of strategies used by Transport Scotland for the project proved to be highly successful in the procurement exercise, such as the use of an extensive panel of KPIs, as well as allowing bidding consortia the freedom to suggest changes to designs that could potentially deliver savings and benefits.

The quality of the procurement was recognised in 2018 when Transport Scotland won the GO Infrastructure Project of the Year Award and the GO Excellence Scotland Award 2018/19 for the Forth Replacement (Queensferry) Crossing project at the 2018 GO Awards. There was further success for the project at the National GO2019 Awards in Birmingham, where it was awarded the GO Infrastructure Project of the Year.

In order to understand more about just what exactly made the procurement on this project such a success, I spoke to Lawrence Shackman, Project Manager for the Queensferry Crossing and Head of Rail Projects and Technical Services at Transport Scotland. So if you’re looking to learn from the best, now’s the time to pay attention!

What made the procurement exercise such a success to deliver the outcomes it did?

There were many good aspects to the exercise to make it a success. In particular, using the Competitive Dialogue method, which ensured we were able to engage fully with the tenderers in explaining the scope of the project, the reasoning behind the specimen design and the build process, their design and construction proposals and many other which helped to de-risk the project.

This also included supplying the tenderers with full project information, including ground investigation data and specimen designs to give examples of how the bridge, roads and associated infrastructure may be designed to satisfy the requirements.

What was the biggest challenge with the procurement and how did you overcome it?

There was a major risk that we would only be left with one bidder for the Principal Contract, as only two consortia tendered. We overcame the risk by using a Participation Agreement, signed by both tenderers, which guaranteed two things: 1 – that if Scottish Ministers did not proceed with the award of the Principal Contract, the tenderers would be reimbursed with their tender costs up to a value of £10 million; and 2 – if the contract was awarded, then the unsuccessful tenderer would be reimbursed half of their costs, up to a maximum value of £5 million.

This Agreement effectively helped to ensure that the competition remained through to submission of tenders, helping to minimise the risk of us only receiving one bid. That would have required significant additional time to verify that it represented value for money.

What lessons did you learn for future projects?

There are so many that it would be impossible to detail them all here! We intend to publish a Lessons Learned Report in the next couple of months.

If this article publishes after the publication of the report, I will link to it here.

Do you have any advice for other public sector procurement professionals working on tenders or projects to learn from your success?

Again, there are so many lessons we would share, as I have already done with other procurement professionals. Without going into too much detail, you need to ensure that you have good governance, good stakeholder engagement, technical competence, a realistic programme and cost estimating, plus robust risk management. A solid, consistent team is also essential to guide and manage the process.

Apply the Lessons

There won’t be many procurement professionals who have the opportunity to work on a project such as this, but that doesn’t mean to say that the lessons learned here are applicable across the entire profession.

Robust specifications, good stakeholder engagement, good governance and realistic programmes apply to big and small projects alike, and there is always the opportunity to look for more innovative methods to help with risk management or complex tenders.

So let’s focus on the positives, follow the path laid out for us by other professionals who have delivered successful, high-profile projects such as the Queensferry Crossing, learn from them and see what we can do in our own organisations. Remember – there is always someone to learn from who has been there, seen it, done it, so who not learn from them before we start.