The Report by Robin Crawford and Ken Lewandowski on their findings following their Review of Scottish Public Sector Procurement in Construction has now been published. It is available here.
The report runs to 180 pages and primarily focuses on ways to achieve better procurement in public sector construction. The authors define their vision as "an approach which achieves better collaboration in design-led, efficient and effective public sector construction procurement and which has regard to sustainability in all senses of the word."
A number of main themes have been identified which the authors consider will support better procurement including:
- Design led outcome-focussed procurement
- Consideration of whole life cost at all stages
- Proportionality of the procurement process to the size and risk of the contract
- Collaboration
- Simplification
- Sustainability
- Balancing of risk between client and contractor
In terms of the pipeline of work, it is suggested each public body should annually publish a rolling forward pipeline of anticipated spend on construction and that regular forums are held with construction businesses to discuss work pipeline, issues and opportunities. Further, that all projects which are advertised (suggested as works contracts worth £2m+ and services contracts worth £50k+) are advertised on the Public Contracts Scotland (PCS) portal.
Early engagement among clients, users, designers and contractors is encouraged in order to get the design and project brief right from the start.
To deal with the issue of prompt and fair payment to contractors and subcontractors, Project Bank Accounts are recommended, as are contractual terms which outline fair payment terms throughout the supply chain. The Scottish Government has already identified a number of projects for trialling of Project Bank Accounts.
There is a recognition that the procurement process and its costs can be disproportionate to the planned spend. New guidelines are recommended to set out best practice including proportionate pre-qualification requirements. The standard pre-qualification questionnaire should be used in a proportionate way relevant to the needs of the procurement. There is encouragement for the use of Quick Quote for contracts with values less than the advertising threshold.
For SME's a support mechanism is suggested to help them understand how to compete for public contracts.
The use of BIM is recommended for central Scottish Government projects with a view to encouraging its adoption across the entire public sector. The objective is that construction projects across the public sector adopt a BIM Level 2 approach by April 2017. This brings Scotland roughly in line with the UK government which has mandated use of BIM by 2016.
The authors of the report suggest that the guiding principle to be applied in implementing their recommendations is "to seek to reduce costs by removing unnecessary procedures and simplifying the procurement process."
The Report is to be welcomed. It is now over to government to consider the recommendations in detail and move on with the implementation stage.
Disclaimer
The material contained in this article is of the nature of general comment only and does not give advice on any particular matter. Recipients should not act on the basis of the information in this e-update without taking appropriate professional advice upon their own particular circumstances.
