Seven Police Force Collaboration – Category Strategies

To achieve Seven Forces objectives, we provided experienced senior procurement and analytical resource services with a programme lead to ensure a seamless interaction with the client. This was focused upon guidance, pipeline exploration and project prioritisation.

To deliver the category strategies and procurements, a team experienced in FM procurements and OJEU were selected to undertake stakeholder data collation, support the specification drafting, produce category strategies and undertake the procurements in accordance with the Public Procurement Regulations. Client interaction was facilitated by daily project calls and weekly progress reporting. All procurement work was aligned to Seven Force’s stringent internal governance procedures.

Throughout the procurement work, Barkers were cognisant of the scrutiny of the high profile Seven Forces collaboration and importance of contributing savings to the Seven Forces savings target, together with social value delivery for the various Authority Police Commissioners.

All project work undertaken by Barkers was underpinned by fortnightly and monthly reporting of progress for each project and a savings tracker against spend and budget for monitoring progress and risks on the projected savings.

Setting up the SRM framework and identifying SRM opportunities was specifically managed by an experienced senior managing consultant.

Training was developed in conjunction with the client and specifically targeted areas of knowledge enhancement together with innovative scenarios to stretch the participants in the group sessions.

Additional project work was resourced by the Barker’s team with specific competencies.

This was all co-ordinated and managed by a senior managing consultant leading the programme delivery on behalf of the Barkers team.

Barkers have also offered further project initiatives including supplier ERP identification, payment terms review and improvement, purchase price variance investigation, demand best practice benchmarking, national benchmarking of vetted services and further specific category support.

We are pleased to announce the following results:

• Delivery of £5.4m savings contribution to Seven Forces three year £10m target in just six months. (waste and recycling management, cleaning services and grounds maintenance services contracts)
• Setting up a further £1.7m savings to be delivered by Seven Forces procurement team through the provision of market analysis and category strategies. (water utilities, waste SRM, utility billing recovery audit and construction consultancy JCT contract)
• Delivery of £29.6m social value on three new FM contracts.
• Upskilled category and SRM teams with comprehensive, interactive and targeted content training modules which was very highly rated by participants.
• Supplier assurance project accepted by Seven Forces providing expert advice on cloud options.

• Social value within the Seven Forces is seen as an integral part of its supply chain. It plans to ensure communities and local supply chains are engaged and benefit from social value investment. Its tendering process explores and measures potential suppliers on how they will contribute to and engage with the local community. The Police Commissioners have a vested interest in creating social value within their communities and contribution to social value forms an important part of the Authority’s Police and Crime Plans.
• Barkers selected appropriate social value criteria from the National Themes, Outcomes and Measures (TOMs) Framework in line with principles laid out within the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 for the three main FM tender procurements. Specific themes were chosen in order for the winning bidders to embed relevant social value into their supply chain processes.
• Barkers enabled the delivery of tender outcomes across the three new major FM contracts with commitments of delivering £29.6m of social value over the next four years covering aspects including more local people in employment, more working with the community (such as donations of material or manpower to local community projects), reduced carbon emissions, more opportunities for disadvantaged people and promotion of ethical procurement.
• In addition, Barkers specifically devised a waste management category strategy that was aimed at delivering a consistent approach to waste management across the Seven Forces regions with a particular emphasis on the winning bidder delivering social value by using at least 50% SME sub-contractors within its supply chain.