What’s next after frameworks?
Friday, August 21st, 2009
By Don Ward
Building returned to this theme again following their interview with Steve Morgan, the new capital projects director at BAA, in their June 26 issue and the accompanying leader. Such was the postbag they received, headed by yours truly, that they then asked Stan Hornagold and I to debate the issue, a transcript of which appeared in the August 7 issue with another leader, this time entitled “Anyone for a free lunch?”.
I enjoyed the interview with Steven Morgan of BAA, and I have arranged to meet him to discuss his plans and our views, which will be really valuable. At the time I felt it was easy to misinterpret what he had to say about frameworks and collaborative working, and it certainly did not justify the leader “Is partnering dead?”. Frameworks are but one aspect of collaborative working, but too many people see them as a way of avoiding EU procurement process on every project, instead of realising the real benefit of the efficiency and cost improvements which come from the same team working together on successive projects – provided the process is well managed and there are stretching improvement targets in place. No-one should confuse this with negotiation or a soft touch, no-one from Egan onwards has advocated anything other than fierce competition. What we want is the right sort of competition, based on quality, trust and on whole life cost and value and which procures the whole team, instead of a lowest price bidding ‘game’ and a sequential risk dumping process down the supply chain.
So what’s next after frameworks for the public sector? Probably more frameworks, but manage them properly this time!
PS. The Building debate was also a useful reminder always to be precise in how you say things to the press. I got slightly misquoted in the heat of the debate, and managed to come across as lumping the (original version of) ProCure 21 in with poorly managed frameworks such as the OGC consultants’ framework, for which I apologise to ProCure 21, which is undoubtedly one of the better frameworks.