This review provides clients and suppliers with the questions they should ask and the answers they should expect in order to choose between the many hundreds of public sector construction frameworks that are currently procured each year. It explains the features of a Gold Standard framework, a Gold Standard framework contract and a Gold Standard action plan, and it shows how together these provide a powerful engine-room for implementing Construction Playbook policies and for delivering better, safer, faster and greener projects.
Review consultation has assessed the current landscape of public sector construction frameworks, analysing the experience and good practice shared by clients and industry in order to develop recommendations for a Gold Standard framework, a Gold Standard framework contract and a Gold Standard action plan. These Gold Standards are not a single kitemark or a box-ticking approach to Construction Playbook compliance. They comprise a matrix of proven components that create a fresh approach to framework strategies, procurement, contracting and management, and that avoid the pitfalls of bureaucratic and inconsistent practices.
This review provides the criteria against which clients and suppliers can establish the strategy, procurement, contracting and management of a Gold Standard framework, can identify how they adopt Construction Playbook policies and can measure how they deliver:
■ Better, safer, faster and greener outcomes from projects and programmes of work
■ Net zero carbon and social value targets through agreed joint actions
■ Improved safety through whole life value and optimal use of digital information
■ Industry investment through aggregation, standardisation and optimal use of MMC
■ Improved efficiency and innovation through strategic use of ESI
■ Improved contributions from SMEs, including local and regional businesses
■ Efficiency savings for clients and industry through consistent, transparent documents
■ Savings for clients and industry through collaboration and dispute avoidance.
This review provides the criteria against which clients and suppliers can establish a Gold Standard framework contract, and it illustrates how a framework contract can improve value, reduce risks and contribute to project outcomes through:
■ Framework management systems that support collaboration and dispute avoidance.
■ An outcome-based strategic brief that drives economic, social and environmental value with strategic supplier proposals for delivering that brief
■ Multi-party relationships creating a 'framework alliance' that aligns objectives, success measures, targets and incentives with commitments to joint work on improving value and reducing risk
■ A timetable of strategic systems to improve integration and outcomes by implementing digital technologies, MMC, ESI and the Government's recommended system of contractor-led 'Supply Chain Collaboration'
■ Transparent costing, call-off, performance measurement and incentives that provide a fair return for suppliers and drive value rather than a race to the bottom.
This review illustrates how clients and suppliers can create and implement a collaborative Gold Standard action plan under their current frameworks, using joint activities such as supplemental framework alliances to convert their improved value objectives into agreed systems and timetables that deliver better, safer, faster, greener project outcomes.
The Construction Playbook requires 14 key procurement policies to be implemented 'on a comply or explain basis' (p.10) as drivers for better, safer, faster and greener construction, and this review considers the role of frameworks in providing an objective and measurable basis for implementing these policies. The Playbook connects procurement, contracts, people and technology in order to 'meet the joint challenge of more sustainable contracts' and in order to 'build relationships and trust through how we contract, think long-term, manage risks and share information more effectively, be flexible when things need to change and ultimately deliver continuous improvement and real value' (p.44). The Playbook provides a unique opportunity for clients and industry to use construction frameworks as a means to energise the economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and through which to put collective energy into finding new solutions that improve outcomes and reward excellence.
The Playbook shows how improvements in project outcomes can be driven by improvements in procurement and contracting practices. However, the good practices that are developed and proven on a standalone project are not easily transferable for adoption by other clients and suppliers because:
■ Personnel from different organisations in each new project team are unfamiliar with each other and there may only be a limited level of trust
■ Procurement systems for each project provide little opportunity for achieving incremental improvements in efficiency and effectiveness
■ Good ideas and efficient practices can be lost when a project team disbands.