Talking Point
The introduction of PAS91 was another sensible development and an attempt to simplify procurement
the availability of such a good document, the vast majority of public sector organisations still use their own forms – some of which were originally drafted as far back as the 1980s, making each PQQ submission a bespoke, time-intensive document to produce every time. How many public sector organisations even know PAS91 documentation actually exists? Why is this approach not widely used?
The challenge for SMEs The huge challenge for SMEs is that large multinational consultancies and the major contractors have whole departments dedicated to working on PQQs and tender submissions. The average SME simply does not have these resources so entering into public sector procurement takes senior staff away from fee-earning work and this puts significant pressure on these businesses. And whilst submissions from SMEs may be technically excellent, they will never be as polished as those produced by major companies with many more resources – when every document has to be bespoke. Another example is insurance. In both OJEU and non-OJEU PQQs, professional indemnity insurance is set so high that SMEs are completely eliminated at the outset. Why would you need £10m of professional indemnity insurance to be in place for project management or cost control services on a £1m building project – when the services being tendered for
How opportunities can be improved
do not involve design or engineering the building? But we see this requirement all the time and £10m of insurance is prohibitively costly for an SME.
Our recommendations for change include: Standardised PQQs using either Constructionline registration to pre-qualify or the PAS91 standardised documentation. Only evidence of project-specific skills and experience would then need to be provided, radically reducing the time spent on PQQs. A clearly defined set of accreditations, qualifications and professional memberships to ‘qualify’ SMEs for public sector tendering opportunities. Sensible cost banding of projects – clearly not all SMEs would have the resources to deliver a £100m project. There is no clear non-OJEU process for smaller work packages – for example, school projects up to £1.5m. There has to be a better way of communicating these opportunities to SMEs. A supply chain database would help address this. Currently even small packages go to the major supply chain partners on the frameworks – because it is just easier but this is leaving SMEs out in the cold. More public sector clients need to actively and genuinely demonstrate a commitment to localism and to supporting SMEs by making it possible for these fantastic, flexible, agile, customer-focused and innovative organisations to become part of the supply chain. Failing that, central Government needs to mandate a suitable process.
The issues post-PQQ If the first stage of the tendering is successful, then there is a further lengthy and resource-intensive process to go through which again is a major challenge for SMEs. There is no doubt that frameworks for building services are largely populated by the biggest companies – but in our view, these frameworks do not necessarily offer a best value route to procurement.
A shocking statistic A shocking fact for Evolution5 is that despite working on over 100 PQQs, taking expert advice and professional input in the quality of our proposals, requesting feedback on every single one and ploughing that knowledge and experience back into the next opportunity, we have been successful on zero tenders to date. Yet in complete contrast, our customer satisfaction scores across the board are outstanding – 100% in the past year and 99.4% since Evolution5 was established in 2007. And 100% of our customers, which includes a high percentage of public sector organisations, would use our services again. This suggests something is radically wrong with the public sector procurement system.
www.evolution5.co.uk
Public Sector Build Journal 19