10.11.17
Delivering on estates
Sam Ulyatt, strategic category commercial director at the Crown Commercial Service (CCS), on how a new framework can help public sector organisations manage their estates, identify savings and release unwanted assets.
The UK’s largest public procurement organisation has announced the award of a commercial framework to reduce the cost of estates management – saving millions of pounds and giving SMEs the opportunity to work with the public sector.
The Estates Professional Services framework (RM3816), which is expected to see up to £430m spent through it over the next four years, could help public sector bodies like councils, NHS trusts, schools, the emergency services and housing associations save £35m over the next four years. More than 120 suppliers contacted CCS about the agreement, with over a third of those appointed being SMEs.
The framework enables organisations to buy advice, guidance and associated services to help them manage their estates and assets, reduce property costs, release unwanted assets, and identify savings and opportunities to generate income from land and buildings.
The framework offers a mix of 33 suppliers with national and local expertise across four lots.
Building on success
RM3816 will complement other CCS property frameworks including Project Management and Full Design Team Services and Facilities Management, enabling CCS to provide an asset lifecycle offering for property management solutions.
The cost model for RM3816 has been developed to incentivise suppliers to build on estate transactional savings and additional income, with supplier fees relating to these savings or income. Improvements have been introduced to increase transparency, removing tranche fees and ensuring that maximum costs reflect the national picture, rather than London-centrism.
The agreement now supports all aspects of the property lifecycle including agricultural services and the Vertical Real Estate market. Additionally, to ensure the end-to-end service is joined-up, customers can procure a managed service procurement/contract management for facilities management.
The framework benefits
The framework provides a simple route for customers to access a comprehensive range of suppliers through a further competition or direct award process. Further competitions take around four weeks, depending on the size and scale of the requirement – cutting out the need for organisations to carry out their own lengthy procurement processes.
Flexibility is also built-in, with a carefully designed lot structure and the ability for customers to tailor further competitions to achieve the best outcomes that fit with their requirements – which could include social value considerations or a wish to work with SMEs.
Maximum standard rates are fixed for the first two years of the framework and can be reduced by suppliers during direct award or further competitions, generating more savings. The delivery of savings is embedded into the pricing model, with competitive rates agreed and continuous improvement at the heart of the framework’s design. Some services can be incentivised based on the level of savings achieved or additional income generated.
Customers can access management information to track and capture spend, based on a common set of service codes, allowing in-depth analysis of the cost benefits being realised.
Social value is also an increasingly important consideration for public bodies, and agreements signed through Estates Professional Services can be tailored to match the customer’s social value priorities to deliver measurable benefits, for instance in the areas of modern slavery; local supply chain; health and wellbeing; employment and training; and environment and sustainability.
Support on offer
CCS can offer various levels of support to customers with call-offs or framework queries, including:
- Review and guidance of call-off agreements;
- Supplier management and issue escalation;
- High-level reporting on customer spend, i.e. SMEs’ spend breakdown;
- Query resolution and support;
- Overview of all customer requirements through access agreement process, enabling possible aggregation;
- Running customer user groups enabling continuous improvement and customer surveys.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
To find out more about the framework, contact:
E: [email protected]