3.6 The Government recognises the need to ensure that the public sector has the necessary skills and experience to develop and manage future PF2 procurements. Strong commercial and negotiating skills are essential to secure a PF2 procurement outcome which is value for money.
3.7 In the past there have been difficulties in attracting the right level of procurement expertise to public sector roles and ensuring that this expertise is retained within the public sector once it has been developed. The fragmentation of PFI procurement across many procuring authorities has meant that often there has been little opportunity for procurement specialists to move to subsequent projects of a similar size and complexity and apply their skills and lessons learnt to these new projects. Procurement expertise has also been insufficiently valued within the public sector and as a result, public servants have often been reluctant to pursue this as a career path.