4.4 Where the Procuring Authority decides not to bring the service provision in house it will need to establish how much time it requires both to undertake the procurement of the new delivery option and also to prepare for it.
4.5 The duration of the procurement itself will depend on the nature and scope of the services being procured and could range from eighteen months or more to run a repeat PFI or other form of complex procurement run under the EU Competitive Dialogue or Negotiated procedures to approximately three months for the procurement of soft FM services, if applicable, under the Open or Restricted procedures (less if the Accelerated Restricted procedure is followed).2
4.6 The amount of time required to prepare for the procurement also needs to be carefully considered. As with any project, the ability of the authority to deliver to planned timescales will depend to a very significant degree on being fully prepared. IT projects in particular should refer to OGC's Pre-qualification tool (PQT) which has been designed to assess the authority's readiness to commence procurement.3
4.7 In fact as a test of readiness for procurement, the PQT is sufficiently generic as to largely applicable to any project.
4.8 In terms of securing long-term value for money, the most critical preparation activity is for the Authority to ensure as far as possible that there is a competitive market willing to bid for the new Contract. These re-competition issues are set out in Box 1 below.
Box 1: Recompetition Issues If there is a continuing need for private sector service provision and competitive procurement is being sought - as would normally be the objective - one important factor is to ensure that there is sufficient market interest to set up and maintain a strong competition. Unless the performance of the Project Company in delivering services has been poor (and more importantly seen to be poor by external parties), other potential providers may believe that the incumbent has a genuine advantage in any open competition which may lead to them deciding not to bid. This will be increasingly true the more the future service provision relies on: • a wide range of capabilities held by the Project Company; or • shared or Project Company-owned assets; or • Project Company-owned Intellectual Property Rights (IPR); or • an in-depth understanding of the underlying business. The Authority therefore has an important role to play in the period leading up to the end of the term to allay concerns that prospective bidders might have and to convince them that the opportunity is worth investing in. 4 Specifically, the Authority must ensure that: • as far as possible, the incumbent Project Company does not actually have an unfair advantage (by ensuring for example that all the information and site access required by bidders to prepare their bids and conduct due diligence is made freely available in a timely fashion). • the incumbent Project Company is not perceived as having an unfair advantage (by engaging in early and open briefings with prospective bidders). • its own behaviour demonstrates that it is professional and well organised (and therefore both a good customer and also able to manage a well-run procurement). |
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2 Further guidance on application of the EU directives and the various procurement procedures can be found on the OGC website at: www.ogc.gov.uk/procurement policy and practice procurement policy and application of eu rules.asp
3 www.ogc.gov.uk/documents/Procurement Pre Qualification Test.pdf
4 Further guidance on recompetition is available from the OGC website at www.ogc.gov.uk/briefings_re-competition.asp