The Management Consultancy Two Framework has now exposed
what many thought about Government policy all along: they don’t care about
SMEs.
In my previous posts, I have explained how SME-unfriendly
the framework is, and they have made a few changes to the more ridiculous parts.
But this framework is still tilted massively in favour of big firms. In a pretty shambolic webinar last week where CCS reps refused to take any questions or enter into any discussions, they disgracefully claimed that an aspiration of the framework was to support the commercial strategy towards a spend target of 20% with SMEs. How they kept a straight face I do not know - perhaps the speaker has not actually seen the bid documents. Over the
past few weeks, SMEs have asked a load of questions to CCS to try to see if they
will be more accommodating to the SME end of the market than their mates in the
big 4. And on every occasion the answer has either been some woolly non-answer
or outright to tell the SMEs that they are not budging.
There are challenges across the piece, but I am going to
focus on lot 3 where the biggest issue lies, lot 3. This is supposedly for “complex
and transformational consultancy”. The
requirement to get on this lot is to have had two £5m contracts in the past 18
months, awarded as a single contract rather than a number of pieces of work
over that period. The bar here is Everest-like for SMEs but a minor hurdle for
a big firm. Which is exactly what CCS want – they want to create a lot where
the plebs are not welcome, where their customers can pick from the suppliers
they want and keep the SMEs out of the way.
The SMEs have done their best to try to get CCS to be more
reasonable here.
“Such minimum contract values
would exclude most SMEs” said one question, CCS response was just to reiterate the
number.
“[Could this value relate to] a
range of services delivered under a contractual relationship” asked another,
and CCS said “the case study value relates to a single contract award”.
“[Could we] use case studies where
the contract was awarded before October 2016 and is still being delivered … [as
the current wording] would restrict bidders for lot 3 to only the very large
firms” asked another, CCS reply was that it had to be awarded post October
2016.
Again and again the SMEs asked the same thing. Again and
again CCS demonstrated that they were not budging. Someone asked them “how many
single-contract £5m tenders have been let through Consultancy One in the past
18 months” - CCS response was just “we will not publish the information”.
OK, so it was clear that SMEs are not welcome in Lot 3. If
it really is for mega projects, perhaps that is not unreasonable. If you were
looking for a consultancy to manage the building of a nuclear power station or
an aircraft carrier, Bob’s Consultancy Services of Kettering might not be up to
the job and you might need to go to one of the big firms to handle it. If you
need a couple of people to put together a new tourism strategy for Corby Town
Council, Bob may well be your man and you can secure his services through Lot 1
general consultancy. So perhaps CCS is being reasonable and just making sure that
their customers don’t have to consider firms that will not be able to do the
work.
Unfortunately, Government departments don’t think like that.
Many departments prefer to work with the big firms. They know that if something
goes wrong and they picked PWC or Deloitte nobody will blame them, whereas if
they pick Bob’s Consultancy Services (sorry Bob) people will doubt their
judgement.
So given a choice, most departments would want to use Lot 3 rather
than Lot 1. Lot 3 is for “complex and transformation consultancy” but if you
have need a few consultants to do some work for you, it may well be “complex” in
your eyes and so what’s to stop you going with Lot 3? On Consultancy One there
was a multi-specialism consultancy lot for similar complex projects which was
stacked with big firms, and loads of work was funnelled down it just to avoid
the SMEs on the more specialist lots. Before that there was the Multi-Disciplinary
Consultancy Framework, a whole framework to keep SMEs away, and again that was
used whenever departments wanted to avoid the plebs. Given half a chance, you
know that departments will abuse frameworks like this.
CCS, with its supposed aspiration to channel 20% of consultancy
to SMEs to support Government policy, could step in here. They could make it
clear that a couple of consultants does not make a complex or transformational
consultancy assignment, and that this lot really is for the nuclear power
stations and the aircraft carriers.
More SMEs, realising that CCS was not budging on the case
studies, tried to get them to give some protection.
“Have you considered putting a
minimum value on lot 3 call offs of, say, £3m to avoid [the abuse of this lot]”
- CCS’s answer was “a complex and transformation project could be of any value
and therefore we will not be placing a minimum value on the lot”.
“You would allow a customer to
use Lot 3 for a £100k piece of consultancy if they decided it was complex –
surely you must be able to put some minimum limit on these call offs to avoid
anti-competitive use even if just £1m” - CCS answer again was that they will
not put any minimum value on.
So there you have CCS’s SME strategy laid bare.
We are awarding a lot that nobody can get on unless they have done two
£5m single contracts over the past 18 months. But if you are in that club, it
is fine for customers to award you a £100k contract for a small piece of
consultancy and all you have to do is say it is complex or transformational.
Oh, and CCS will do absolutely nothing to police this, so, our big consultancy
friends, fill your boots.
It is time for CCS to drop the charade. They are not SME friendly.
If SMEs somehow manage to pick up a few scraps off the floor from the table of
the big firms, and if those amount to five or ten percent of the work, they
will pat themselves on the back for their innovative support of SMEs. It’s a
sham. Government prefers working with big firms even if it costs more and
delivers less because they are risk averse. And CCS has absolutely no intention
of doing anything about it.
After all of their months of working on this framework, CCS
have missed a massive opportunity to break the oligopoly of the big consultancy
firms, to give the SMEs a chance to shine and to encourage their use. Even with
a level playing field getting departments to award 20% of consultancy work to
SMEs is a tough ask. With the field tilted this far by CCS’s failed framework
design and lack of interest in fixing it, the status quo will remain.
