Juggling with Fire – the Challenges Facing Public Procurement

I recently hosted a webinar with Framespan and had the pleasure of talking to Jim Hemmington, the BBC’s Procurement Director, and Ed Bradley, founder of Virtualstock and the brains behind Framespan, the innovative software that’s helping public sector procurement professionals take the pain out of finding the right procurement pathway.

The webinar was provocatively titled “Juggling with Fire” and the theme was how public sector procurement can successfully address all the different and sometimes even conflicting priorities that it faces.?It is becoming more and more of a challenge as buyers are expected to work within the legislative framework, achieve value for money for taxpayers, drive innovation and social value from suppliers, fight against fraud and corruption - and do it all within tight financial and resource constraints.?

With a new Procurement Bill also on the horizon in the UK, how can professionals possibly balance or juggle all these priorities? Here are some of the key points that came out of the session.

Simplify – you don’t have to ask every possible question in your tendering and selection process. Your evaluation must be fair and transparent, but the complexity of what you ask should be proportionate to the risk and size of the contract. And remember that suppliers may not bid if you make the cost too great. Even the BBC, despite its great name, has seen some suppliers saying that they didn’t want to bid. “You have to shape your expectations depending on what you’re buying”, said Hemmington. “We will qualify ourselves out of a tender very quickly if we don’t think we can deliver”, Bradley added. That often applies where buyers have bundled different products or services together, thinking that aggregation is good. But ruling out many firms leads to either a lack of competition and a huge firm winning - or a complicated consortium trying to deliver.

Technology – through the pandemic, e-commerce activity increased greatly and many new tools and technologies emerged. It’s clear that professionals must exploit what is available to make our work more efficient and effective. Framespan is an example; created because of a request from an NHS trust, it allows users to see the whole range of public sector frameworks available to buyers. ?Other new tools address a wide range of procurement capabilities.

Stakeholders ?- internal stakeholders are vital to achieving successful and effective procurement. The pandemic raised the profile of procurement, Hemmington suggested, because in most organisations we had to adapt quickly to new ways of working. Many stakeholders saw the benefit of good corporate agreements when things got difficult (even in apparently “simple” services such as hotel booking or transportation) – certainly the BBC’s suppliers helped the organisation pull through those difficult times. So procurement must continue to explain to internal stakeholders just what the organisation gets out of suppliers and contracts – not just price but risk management, service, and other factors.

Risk management – a focus on risk has always been important but recent events (pandemic, Ukraine etc.) have emphasised the importance of “looking more intelligently into our supply chains” as Hemmington said. “We segmented out suppliers a bit more intelligently, looked to work with some more closely”.?The increased focus has been healthy, and much has continued post-pandemic. Risk management may look like an optional extra within the procurement portfolio – but disregard it, and the longer-term consequences can be very serious.

Sustainability and purpose – this is yet another deliverable that both procurement and suppliers now have to think about! Bradley agreed that both private and public sectors are scrutinising ethical practices, cyber security and sustainability issues within the wider supply chain – “but that’s where it gets tricky”.?Larger firms struggle to get to grips with the sheer size and scope of their supply chains and smaller firms often don’t have the expertise needed in this area. We really need technology solutions here. And “we might make life harder for exactly the sort of supplier we really want to support if we ask too many difficult questions!”?Its very tempting to put the burden on suppliers, Hemmington said, but you can’t do it all at once at the pace some would like – “eliminating” single use plastics for the BBC for instance has proved tough.?But it is important that “we deal with suppliers whose values are similar to ours”.?

Questions from delegates included the tricky issue of whether the new UK Procurement Bill is going to open up exciting new opportunities for public procurement!?The jury is still out on that – will more suppliers actually be barred, for example? Will buyers use the flexibility to develop new procurement approaches??Hemmington feels that the BBC tries to be innovative already and will look at what can be done within the new regulations. “For those who dare, there is an opportunity here - but you will need to tell suppliers about the new journey, be open and transparent about any innovative new processes”. But he is concerned about the workload implications arising from the need for additional public disclosure of data around procurement and contracts.

And there was more during what I hope was a good discussion – so if you want to listen to the whole?session, there is a link in the "comments" below.