Department for Transport (DfT)
The DfT ensures that projects in operation continue to benefit from central scrutiny and assurance of projects. Its major projects guidance requires Local Authorities to undertake Gateway Reviews on all projects with a whole life value in excess of £50 million. To support this, the DfT provides £300,000 in funding to Local Partnerships to undertake Gateway Reviews, and for one-off PPP projects, DfT currently funds a full set of Gateway Reviews one to five. For PFI programmes such as street lighting projects, the practice is that local authorities fund Gateway Reviews one to three, and DfT funds Gateway Reviews four and five. The Gateway Reviews ensure that the Authorities are properly managing their contracts, and protecting value for money.
DfT's Corporate Finance Team has also undertaken its own operational reviews of many projects. These reviews identify ways for the team to improve on future procurements and, as with the Gateway Reviews, can also identify performance risks and issues to be addressed.
The Corporate Finance Team also provides post signature support at key points. It advises the procuring authorities on major contract variations such as refinancing or changes of ownership. As a sponsor of projects, it ensures there are business case processes in place to monitor benefits realisation. It does not itself provide support on demand for operational management issues. Transport projects can call upon Local Partnership's operational group for support with operational issues.
Department of Health (DoH)
PFI hospital contracts are awarded and managed by local NHS Trusts. The DoH supports these Trusts in the operational stage by disseminating guidance and best practice, providing generic advice from its expert team, and facilitating networking between Trusts.
The Department organises a national quarterly forum of contract managers to discuss hot topics and the challenges of managing the PFI contracts. Recent topics have included Value Testing, contract variations and IFRS accounting, and budgeting treatment. These forums are regularly attended by around 70 per cent of all Trusts, and form a key part of contract managers' continuing professional development. They also facilitate networking between Trusts with the same contractors, to discuss mutual negotiation issues.
Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF)
The DCSF's Building Schools for the Future Programme aims to renew every secondary school in the country and to use that capital investment as a catalyst to help improve educational outcomes. The objectives of each project, including the educational impact, are set by the individual Local Authorities and Schools.
The Department and Partnerships for Schools (PfS), the delivery body, embeds benefit realisation into the programme. It requires each schools and Local Authority to identify the benefits they want from the programme in a strategic business case before they initiate any project. These benefits define the contract specification and a change management programme for each school. Secondary objectives are shared with private sector partners as partnering objectives. These are used in determining whether to continue with the partnership. Success is evaluated in post occupancy reviews one and five years after each renewed school opens.
PfS captures these local benefits in an overall programme benefit realisation system. This will be used to measure the success of the programme. It is in turn linked into PfS's balanced score card used to monitor its own performance.