Agendas, Meetings and Minutes - Agenda item

Agenda item

Commissioning including the Development of the Procurement Strategy

Minutes:

The Panel received a report and presentation from the Director which provided an update on the Council’s commissioning processes including the development of the Procurement Strategy. The following were the key areas covered:

 

·         The strategic vision which set out the Council’s business approach and which drove forward commercial excellence

·         The development of the Procurement strategy to enable a more efficient and effective approach to contract management.

·         The Strategy to develop the skills of the current employees, which was being realised with some of the Procurement Team having now achieved the level 4 qualification. This investment in staff, blending qualifications, alongside practical experience was deemed to be the best way forward to ensure individual employees’ personal development and the development of the Service. The CMR advised that it would also help with staff retention in the longer term.

·         As well as their Team Manager, the staff in the Procurement Team were also being supported in their roles by a few external fully qualified and experienced practitioners who were being used on a short term basis to bolster the Service.

·         The Panel was informed that 12 months’ notice had been given on the Civica contract. The Director outlined some of the issues, which would be considered in developing the Strategy for managing customers. It was agreed that the Director would advise in due course, how the Panel could be involved in the development of this new Strategy.

 

The Head of Commercial provided a demonstration of the Power BI management tool which captured every contract on the system and allowed detailed data analysis. Currently, the dashboard was being used to report on issues including contract liquidity and spend. 

 

·         The Panel was advised that the system was driven by spend and provided information which posed questions rather than providing answers. It would allow systems to be more efficient and effective and enabled a challenge of spending.

·         All contracting was now carried out on an electronic basis through the Intend system, with contractors being required to register and submit bids electronically.

·         The Intend system currently had 845 contracts and allowed detailed analysis of spend for instance by category management or for a particular time period.

·         In response to a question on performance management, the Head of Commercial advised that KPI data on public health was the first to be populated on the system and would enable assessments of value for money on the public health contracts to be carried out next year, when performance graphs and trends would become available.

·         The Council’s policy of no payment of invoices without a purchase order was eliminating bad practice

·         Due to much tighter control, the amount of spend on purchase cards had reduced significantly since last year, from £2.6m to £1m.

 

The Panel were very impressed with the new system, its capabilities and future potential. They could see how it would transform the Council’s procurement work, allowing Officers to view trends, compare performance and have all the current data readily available to inform their work.

 

Further discussion took place, including the points shown below:

 

·         The Director highlighted that contract liquidity was the key focus, as there was a window of opportunity to make changes during the re-commissioning process. During this coming year, there were many contracts which would become liquid, some of which, such as the 0-19 contract were long length contracts of significant value.

·         A Member asked how the Panel could most effectively play a role in the scrutinising the contract spend. A discussion took place about possible ways to involve the Panel and the Director agreed to consider what the best approach might be.

 

The Chairman commented that he was very pleased with the progress that had been made in this area and he thanked the Officers involved for their hard work and for the informative demonstration.

 

It was agreed that the Panel would be provided with an update report on Commissioning and the continuing development of the Procurement Strategy at its March meeting.

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