The Government is committed to ensuring PF2 procurement is faster and cheaper than PFI procurement has been in the past, without sacrificing quality and competitiveness. To achieve this the Government is introducing a number of reforms to: • improve public sector procurement capability by strengthening the mandate of Infrastructure UK and supporting departmental centralised procurement units, where appropriate; • streamline the procurement process by introducing a standardised and efficient approach to running PF2 procurement following the Government's Lean Sourcing principles and launching a comprehensive suite of standard documentation; • establish firm commitments to procurement timescales by requiring departmental ministers to state their commitment to an ambitious procurement timetable when they submit business cases to the Treasury for approval. The competitive tendering phase of PF2 projects will not be allowed to take longer than 18 months unless an exemption is agreed by the Chief Secretary. This will be measured from the issuance of project tender to the appointment of a preferred bidder; and • strengthen the scrutiny of PF2 project preparation by introducing additional Treasury checks in the business case approval process to ensure that projects have undertaken a sufficient level of project preparation prior to issuing a procurement tender. |