In our bid clinic webinar series on 22nd July 2021, Lee Hasell (Managing Partner at CA) and Matt Mitchell (Lead Senior Consultant) shared their top 3 upcoming reasons that will stop you winning public sector contracts, and how to overcome them!
This included:- 1 - The growing importance of current contract performance
- 2 - Changes to procurement i.e. negotiations
- 3 - Carbon Plans (requirement rather than response!)
1. The growing importance of current contract performance
The UK Government have recently released a paper which is set to transform the public sector legislation and procurement process over the coming years. This paper is known as the Green Paper: Transforming Public Procurement and proposes that businesses may be precluded from bidding for contracts if they’re underperforming on existing similar contracts. Subsequently, you may not be able to bid for similar opportunities going forward until your current contracts are running at the desired KPIs within the service level agreement (SLA). Therefore, it’s important you maintain good communication with the Operations team in your organisation to ensure they can deliver contracts to the standard required to not preclude the ability to bid for future opportunities.
An advantage of this activity may mean that existing contracts, with poor performing incumbents, are easily to obtain during the retender. Our tender intelligence platform facilities you with the ability to glean information about which contracts your competitors hold and how they are performing on their current contracts through expressing freedom of information requests. If you discover they are underperforming, you can qualify and pre-engage accordingly.
If you are performing well on contracts, it’s important to capture this success. Detailing compelling evidence of your skills and experience in your submissions will give your responses a factual basis and enable you to score higher marks. The more evidence you can demonstrate, the better! This can be in the form of testimonials, KPIs, SLAs, case studies.
2 - What changes are happening to procurement i.e. negotiations
In the green paper ‘Transforming public procurement’ the UK Government proposes replacing the existing procurement procedures with a new procedure which will allow for more negotiation and greater engagement with potential suppliers to deliver innovative solutions in partnership with the UK public sector. This will retain the negotiated procedure without prior publication but rename it as the limited tendering procedure. Elimination of suppliers through negotiation would still need to be in accordance with the stated evaluation criteria and there would need to be a deadline for the submission of final tenders once negotiations are concluded.
As a result, you will need to consider how you’re going to approach negotiations throughout the preparation of a bid. It will be increasingly important to get the right people involved with the production of the bid at the earliest stage possible, so that they have a comprehensive understanding of the opportunity once you reach the negotiation stage.
This positive potential change is a step forward for public sector, allowing both buyers and suppliers to evaluate how well they might fit together. This will mean better relationships and improved contract performance.
3 - What Are Carbon Plans? (Requirement rather than response!)
In June 2021, the Cabinet Office published Procurement Policy Note 06/21: Taking account of Carbon Reduction Plans in the procurement of major government contracts. The objective of this policy is to assess suppliers’ commitment to achieving Net Zero by 2050 in the UK, in addition to traditional technical and professional ability assessment, in procurement exercises. This will be achieved through the additional submission of a Carbon Reduction Plan.
Carbon Reduction Plans (CRP) may require the following evidence: UK Operations Net Zero by 2050, emissions reporting, environmental management measures in effect including certification schemes, specific carbon reduction measures, or many more.
The PPN only applies to framework agreements and dynamic purchasing systems only where it is anticipated that the individual value of any contract to be awarded under the framework agreement or dynamic purchasing system is greater than £5 million per annum (excluding VAT).
The Carbon Reduction Plan Template, published alongside the PPN as an example provides good insight as to what to expect, and the information you will need to provide; starting from emissions reporting, and any initiatives you may have in place. It will be important that you document evidence of the success of these initiatives to present a robust carbon plan.
If you’re wondering how to write a carbon plan, a good place to start is to get hold of the buyer’s carbon reduction plan (this will be publicly available) and match yours to theirs for every bid you go for. Carbon reduction plans may be tweaked and tailored by buyers depending on the frameworks or dynamic purchasing systems (DPS) in question, so it’s important to be proactive and thorough.
Next steps:
- Look at your current contract performance
- Make your wider team aware of upcoming procurement changes i.e., negotiations
- Get your head around social value and carbon reduction plans - start gathering evidence!
We can help…
Our team of expert advisors are well-equipped to support you through every stage of the bid process, no matter what challenges or hurdles you need to overcome. Find out more about our support and advisory services here.
About Lee Hasell and Matt Mitchell
Lee is our Managing Partner here at Contracts Advance. He manages our Advisory team, and as an experienced senior executive, he’s gathered a wealth of knowledge and expertise over the years. Having been both CEO and Director of Business Development for a large blue-chip provider, Lee continues to play an active role within the public sector by providing advice to clients on strategy and bidding.
Matt has over 25 years of bidding experience with considerable managerial expertise in corporate and operational services. Matt has supported CA and our clients to project manage a multitude of bids in industries ranging from; defence, healthcare, print, FM and many more. Matt has previously held a number of senior roles including Director of Development and is the Lead Consultant at CA.