What further improvements could Government consider to the standard approach to PFI procurement in order to streamline the process and reduce costs, while meeting wider objectives for effective competition, accessing bidder innovation and maintaining a robust contractual framework? 

SFT considers that there are 4 significant areas for improvement: 

a)  A revised interaction between design development and procurement. Greater public sector design prior to procurement commencing will save time and cost during the tender process. The tension is that some bidders will feel constrained and unable to offer maximum innovation to meet a requirement truly described by outputs. In general, the time and cost benefits of undertaking high-quality design in the public sector including building layout, adjacencies and room sizes prior to starting the procurement is considered to outweigh the potential cost of lost innovation. In adoption such an arrangements it is important to properly consider what the design cut-off point should be, how to specify negotiable and non-negotiable elements during the procurement and the use of the design team through the procurement process in order to maximise the benefits that can be gained. Within the public sector led design, there could then be more use made of appropriate standardisation between projects to drive further efficiency and sustainability. 

b)  Contract simplification and further standardisation of elements such as service specification should lead to reduced time and cost in contract negotiation and discussion.  

Both of these areas, if combined with pragmatic bidders who equally want to see quick progress should reduce the time scale for the competitive dialogue stage of the procurement in particular.

c)  Further streamlining and harmonisation across sectors of Prequalification documentation should lessen the investment requirements of bidders when the competition is still very wide; 

d) Improved public sector governance arrangements and approval processes can significantly reduce time scales as the time allowed not just for evaluation, but also for approval of short listing, mid dialogue down selection, preferred bidder appointment and full business case approval can add significantly to time scales and cost.