tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46663169348832593712024-03-08T06:05:52.822-08:00Procurement Thoughtscharliemiddletonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07520339154510986628noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666316934883259371.post-86016270104053576922019-11-26T08:59:00.001-08:002019-11-26T08:59:13.109-08:00The truth about CCS's Management Consultancy Framework<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">New documents have been dragged out of Crown Commercial
Service (CCS) which expose how they deliberately conspired in favour of their
preferred Big 6 consultancy suppliers at the expense of SMEs. And how this went
not just to the top of CCS but also to the Head of the Civil Service and the
Minister responsible. And how they sought to cover it up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In December 2016 Crown Commercial Service (CCS) went out to
tender for a replacement framework for management consultancy services across
the UK public sector, excitingly called “Management Consultancy Framework”.
This consisted of a range of specialist lots for areas like finance, audit, HR,
IT etc, together with a key lot, Lot 1, for general business consultancy
services.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">CCS put an estimated value on lot 1 of £700m to £1.05bn over
the four year term, shared across a maximum of 40 suppliers. This lot
encompassed services including project and change management, organisational
strategy, forecasting and planning as well as some more complex areas such as
mergers and acquisitions. However, it would provide an opportunity for smaller
suppliers to ply their trade alongside the traditional big firms in many areas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lot 1 attracted 177 bids from across the supplier community,
many of these being SMEs. All bidders had to follow the same format of
responses, including demonstrating they had provided at least 2,200 days of relevant
consultancy services within a three year period and that they provided all of
the core specialisms required.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The bids were submitted in February 2017 and the 177 bidders
anxiously awaited the results, which were due in mid June. That date came and
went, and the next thing bidders heard was a message on 31 August 2017 to say
that Lot 1 was being cancelled due to a “construct error in the criteria” which
“did not adequately assess the Bidder’s quality of delivery to the level
required”. At the same time they announced that a replacement framework would
be developed to replace Lot 1.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This caused considerable disquiet in the management
consultancy community. If each of the 177 suppliers put five days of effort
into bidding that lot, the combined cost to these organisations was somewhere
in excess of £500,000. There was discussion in online forums about what had
happened, with a suspicion that the lot had been cancelled because the big
consultancy firms had been unsuccessful. CCS refused to provide any further
comment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In May 2018 a Freedom of Information request was sent to CCS
by Elliot Watson, whom I contacted recently to discuss his request. You can see
the request and the responses at <a href="https://bit.ly/34lPwRJ">https://bit.ly/34lPwRJ</a>.
He asked CCS questions including when the so called construct error was
discovered, whether they had a shortlist of suppliers already identified by
then and for details of any internal documentation surrounding it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Elliot tells me that CCS did all they could to avoid
replying to him, and he needed two formal decision notices from the Information
Commissioner before they finally sent him what he wanted to know. But the documents
recently released at the URL above show a shocking picture of why CCS cancelled
the procurement for this lot simply because the big firms had not won it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first documents released to Mr Watson show
communications between Chrissie Joseph, Director in the Professional Services
division at CCS, Malcolm Harrison, the then CEO of CCS and Peter Lawson,
Strategic Director at CCS. These outline the “problem” that the Big 6 firms are
not on Lot 1, and that they will have to issue “mitigating advice” to customers
(which appears to be to use other lots where the major firms were successful).
They also state that the average day rates on the Finance and Audit lots had
increased by 11% and 36% but as the major firms were successful on these, there
was no apparent issue with this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are then two emails where an unnamed Category Lead and
Chrissie Joseph seek advice from an undisclosed person (probably someone within
Government Legal Department) on whether they will be able to hide all documents
about what they are doing against future Freedom of Information Act requests,
so it appears clear that they knew what they were doing was highly questionable
and wanted to do what they could to cover it up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Malcolm Harrison, CEO at CCS, then had to attend a meeting
with John Manzoni, Chief Executive of the Civil Service, where this debacle
would be discussed. There is a briefing note from Peter Lawson to John Manzoni,
and another similar one where the Minister responsible, Caroline Nokes, is also
copied in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shockingly this admits at the start that the existing
Consultancy One framework has been extended “unlawfully” to December 2017,
which nobody seems to care about.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It then goes on to say that “having completed the evaluation
of lots 1-3, a review revealed that lot 1 had an error in construct which distorted
bid evaluation”. The result of this error resulted in “the proposed selection
of suppliers, many of whom are unlikely to be suitable for the complexity of
the programmes expected to be called off from Lot 1”. It then stated that “in particular,
the exclusion of a number of major consultancy firms would have rendered the
lot practically unusable”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They went on to state that Lots 2-8 are usable, and whilst
there are some “gaps” in lots 4 (HR) and 8 (IT) in “major supplier
representation” these do not necessarily need such representation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So it is clearly set out that the problem with Lot 1 was
that the major consultancy firms had been unsuccessful, and as a result CCS
considered the lot unusable. This is despite the fact that in a previous
response to Mr Watson they had stated that out of the top 30 suppliers on Lot 1
only 13 were SMEs, indicating that there were 17 large firms who presumably
would have been capable of supplying larger projects (and all of the suppliers
had demonstrated they had provided 2,200 days of similar consultancy over 18
months and so were not one man band consultancies).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As a result of their preferred Big 6 suppliers being
uncompetitive and hence unsuccessful, CCS decided to cancel Lot 1. They
describe in the paper (and in other documents) the need to come up with a credible
explanation for this that only applies to Lot 1 (as their favoured suppliers
are on other Lots). They describe how they had sought advice from Government
Legal Department who were uncomfortable with the approach as it admitted some culpability
on the part of CCS (even if it does not expose the downright corruption on
cancelling the framework because their friends were not on it). The legal advisors
stated, however, that suppliers had never managed to successfully claim for
wasted bid costs in the past so they would probably get away with it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">John Manzoni, Caroline Nokes, Malcolm Harrison et al all
agreed with this approach, and so cancelled the lot to protect their friends in
the major consultancy firms. They then set about creating a new framework where
they could be sure that these firms would be successful, skewing the
requirements for “Management Consultancy Framework Two” so that there was a lot
specifically for the major firms with a requirement to have two case studies of
a minimum of £5m each over an 18 month period – and that lot has turned out to
be the highest used to date with £29m of business shared across just ten major
suppliers. They also awarded a smokescreen lot for general consultancy on the new
framework with no entry requirements to pretend that they cared about SMEs,
knowing that customers could always push business through the “complex” lot to
ensure it went to one of the big firms rather than having to deal with SMEs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This whole sorry tale demonstrates how Crown Commercial
Service is not fit for purpose as the UK’s key purchasing body. They put out
what suppliers thought was a fair and open competition, and encouraged SMEs to
participate. When they found that their friends in the major consultancies had
not been successful, rather than accepting that it was time for a change, to
break up the oligopoly and drive better value for money through a new range of
suppliers (some larger and some smaller), they contrived and connived to steal
the opportunities from the successful suppliers and create a new framework to
make sure the big firms stayed in place. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The upshot of all this is that if you are in a big organisation
with lots of Government contracts, you will be fine as CCS has your back; if
you are a tier 2 supplier or an SME trying to break into the market, forget it
as if you manage against the odds to beat the traditional suppliers, CCS will screw
you over. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />charliemiddletonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07520339154510986628noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666316934883259371.post-80596658621145067152018-08-03T08:13:00.003-07:002018-08-03T08:13:18.313-07:00ET goes home but not before exposing failings of CCS<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">According to an article in <span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/31/extraterrestrial_markup_language_services_booted_off_gcloud/" target="_blank">The Register</a></span>, CCS has removed <span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/services/961813600574610" target="_blank">a service</a></span> from G-Cloud which purports to allow
Government customers to communicate with aliens. The service is clearly a spoof
as it refers to communicating with “disc based platforms” in the Clouds (sic)
and the provision of “grey men” and “little green men” beaming in from
satellite offices.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The article focuses on the amusement that a service like
this was on G-Cloud. However, this does expose how little CCS appears to do to
check the authenticity of services it allows on to the Digital Marketplace, and
reflects a worrying trend of CCS not bothering to do any proper assessment of
suppliers or services on many of its frameworks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When frameworks were first allowed by the EU in the 2004
Public Contracts Directive (which then became the Public Contracts Regulations
2006 in England and Wales), the idea was to have a stepping stone between awarding
a contract to a single provider and having to run full open tenders for every
piece of work, so you could create a shortlist of skilled suppliers and allow
customers to run more limited competitions between these or perhaps – if it was
obvious who the winner would be – direct award to one of them. The early uses of
frameworks followed this model, with perhaps 5-10 suppliers on each of them
which was a manageable number. If you competed work amongst all of these, you
would perhaps end up with half of them responding and it was manageable. In
addition, if you were selected as one of the five to ten suppliers in a large
market, it is likely you would have a fantastic service offering and/or an
extremely keen price, providing superb value for money.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Unfortunately, a number of contracting authorities, and CCS
is amongst the worst of these, have now forgotten what frameworks were supposed
to be about. Perhaps it is a new wave of procurement people who were not around
in the early 2000s who know no better. But increasingly they are setting up
ridiculous mass frameworks where the only criteria to get on them is to apply. Among
the worst of these is G-Cloud, where they proudly proclaim how wonderful it is
that there are over 3,500 suppliers offering 25,000 services. This is no longer
a framework, it is just a list of suppliers and CCS is allowing customers just
to pick whomever they want to work with with no real oversight. This means that
rather than having to be the best to get on a framework and providing excellent
value for money, they just open the door for public customers to work with the
firms that they like (or who treat them well) with no real consideration on
value for money.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The other concern with this, especially in the digital
space, is that there is clearly no way that CCS does any effective checking of
the services they put on the framework. Probably they do not do any checking
full stop. Unless CCS has an army of people reviewing the suppliers and their
services, there is no way they could have more than a cursory glance at
services they are approving to go on the framework in the 20 days or so they
allocate between applications closing and the “winners” being announced. Even a
cursory glance at <span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/services/961813600574610" target="_blank">the service</a> for communicating with aliens</span> would
probably identify that it wasn’t for real, suggesting that nobody even looks at
the services before putting them online. (In which case, what exactly does their
team do in the 20 days between applications closing and the award as all the
questions are just Yes/No and can be scored by a computer?)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Why does all this matter? Because when you become a supplier
on G-Cloud, you are allowed to use the official “CCS Supplier” logo on your
website and promotional materials, so it gives you credibility. Your service is
published on the Digital Marketplace, so public sector customers probably think
that there has been some assessment of it and your credibility. At the very
least, they should expect that your company is legitimate and the service is
(relatively) safe to use. But with zero assessment of the suppliers or their
services, there is nothing to stop organisations creating fraudulent services
aimed at ripping off public sector customers or stealing their data. All of the
millions of pounds ploughed into GDPR compliance over the past couple of years
could be undone by a customer using a “CCS-approved” G-Cloud service put up by
a fraudster which slipped through the (non-existent) net.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">According to the article, CCS has now removed the offending
service denying civil servants the ability to communicate with aliens. But it
begs the question of how many other dodgy services they have let through without
any checks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Isn’t it time that CCS did their job and assessed suppliers
and their offerings properly to provide confidence that they have some value,
rather than just facilitating supplier lists and legitimising anyone who asks
to be on them?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />charliemiddletonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07520339154510986628noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666316934883259371.post-12608608799503853932018-05-04T09:02:00.000-07:002018-05-04T09:09:39.880-07:00CCS's SME strategy: we don't like you and we don't care<br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">The Management Consultancy Two Framework has now exposed
what many thought about Government policy all along: <b>they don’t care about
SMEs</b>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">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”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">The SMEs have done their best to try to get CCS to be more
reasonable here. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">“Such minimum contract values
would exclude most SMEs” said one question, CCS response was just to reiterate the
number. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">“[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”. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">“[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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">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”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">More SMEs, realising that CCS was not budging on the case
studies, tried to get them to give some protection. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">“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”. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">“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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">So there you have CCS’s SME strategy laid bare.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />charliemiddletonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07520339154510986628noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666316934883259371.post-22519232399287179022018-04-11T08:29:00.004-07:002018-04-13T06:52:19.900-07:00Management Consultancy Framework 2 - the shambles continues<br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Almost five months ago I blogged about the shambles that Crown
Commercial Service was making of the Management Consultancy Framework, and in
particular its second phase (which was required after they made a complete hash
of the first phase). Since then they have spent a long time navel gazing to
make sure they get it right and after all that time have basically come up with
the same dog’s breakfast they had last November.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The only positive thing they have done is remove the Neutral
Vendor lot which they appear to have accepted was just stupid (or perhaps they
are just holding off on this until a later date).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The main problem is with lots 1 and 2, general consultancy
and procurement/commercial consultancy. These largely replace what was lot 1 of
the original framework until they decided to pull it “due to a construct error”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">So what have they done wrong?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Firstly, these two lots have an unlimited number of
suppliers. The whole idea of a framework is to shortlist suppliers providing
excellent value for money (ie the quality of what they provide against the price
they charge). CCS claims that these two lots are 50% quality and 50% price. This
is rubbish. There is NO quality evaluation. They have set out a series of specifications
and they “quality” evaluation is to say whether you agree to follow these
specifications. If you say yes to all of them, you score full marks for quality
(ie 50 marks). If you say no to any of them, you score zero and are excluded.
So any bidder with a brain cell will say yes and score full marks for quality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Next there is virtually no price evaluation. There are six
grades from Partner down to Junior Consultant, but the pricing evaluation
ignores all of these apart from Principal Consultant and Senior Consultant
which get averaged. Even if your average of these two is more than twice as much
as the median of all suppliers, you still score at least 5 marks for price. There are
some rudimentary limits that say you cannot charge more than twice as much for
the next grade up, but you could price a principal consultant at, say, £1,000 a
day and it would make no difference to your price score whether your partner
rate was £1,200 or £4,000.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">If you score 55 marks or more overall, you get on the
framework. So unless you refuse to work to the specification, you’re in.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">There is no consideration about whether you are any good at
providing consultancy, whether you have good methodologies and tools, how you
work with customers, how you share knowledge or any of that. It is just a tick
box exercise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">You would think from that that this is a massively
SME-friendly framework as it is so easy to get on, a bit like G-Cloud where you
just have to say “yes please” and you are on it. However, what CCS is doing is the
exact opposite of that. This is a framework to support CCS’s big consultancy
friends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">As part of completing the tenders, bidders on Lots 1 and 2
have to complete a service filters spreadsheet. The one for Lot 1 contains, wait
for it, over 180,000 cells. This is split into around 70 different service
lines (capabilities) and across 12 regions (which are further split into 40
sub-regions) and 33 departments or customer types. For each of these, you have
to indicate whether you can provide service.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">So for example, can you provide “Forecasting, planning and
development” consultancy in Lincolnshire for the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office and its arms length bodies. Or “Artificial intelligence” consultancy for
the Not-for-profit sector in Cornwall. Then for everywhere you claim to be able
to provide consultancy, you have to provide a reference for where you have done
so.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">The reason for this ball-ache of a task is that CCS is going
to open up this service filter to buyers of consultancy under the framework. So
if you are in Skegness Town Council and you want to get someone in to develop a
business case for a new pier, you can use the service filters so that you only
have to look at consultancies who have previously provided business cases in
Lincolnshire in local government. You can exclude the firm who has done the
same work 40 miles away in Cromer as that is a different region. Or more
bizarrely, as “Inner London - East” and “Inner London - West” are different
regions, you can exclude someone whose experience is a couple of miles away.
How can this in any way be a reflection of whether a consultancy is capable of
doing the work?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Clearly this is excellent for achieving two aims. Firstly,
if you have worked for a customer before, you are in the box seat to work for
them again as you will meet all the service filters. So it is good for
promulgating the status quo of suppliers, and excluding anyone trying to break
into a new area/market etc. Secondly, if you are big firm, you have probably
done something in most departments and in most parts of the country, so you
will automatically tick the boxes. If you are an SME who has managed to secure
some work at a handful of customers in Manchester, don’t think you will be able
to use this if you set up a new office in Liverpool or Leeds, or to sell your
services to a different department.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Unless you are an SME who has no ambition to grow into new areas,
customers or business lines, this is just about the least SME friendly
framework I have ever seen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">CCS tries to counter this by saying that you can always
update your service filters if you can demonstrate you have worked in new
areas. Really? So when CCS is pushing all public sector to use this new
framework, you have to find someone who will go off framework and give you, a young
SME, a chance somewhere else so that you can get a reference to update your
filters. Thanks!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Finally, if you thought that was bad for SMEs, CCS will
allow pretty unrestricted direct awards under the framework. They say that buyers
can award contracts for up to nine months if they can decide having applied the
direct award criteria which supplier best meets their needs. OK, so what are
the direct award criteria? Whatever the buyer wants. They can define value for
money using any combination of cost, price and quality. So if a buyer wants to
appoint their friend, they can decide that for them quality means someone who
can offer their particular solution, weight it 99% quality and 1% price and
just do it. This also circumvents the service filters (which are only used for
further competitions), so it doesn’t even matter whether they have any
experience in your department/area etc. It is basically a chance to pick any of
the potentially 1,000 suppliers they like and just appoint them with no
competitive process.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Lot 3, complex transactions, and Lot 4, strategic advice, are again designed to keep the SMEs out of the picture. To bid for Lot 3 you have to have two £5m case studies for work done over the past 18 months, so a major barrier to entry. Lot 4 is a bit less onerous, but still requires two £1m case studies where you have supplied strategic advice to ministers, permanent secretaries or senior civil servants. These barriers to entry are insurmountable for most SMEs but just a small hurdle for the big 4 firms. CCS's SME agenda goes out of the window again. Why does this matter as these lots are not really going to be suitable for most SMEs? Because CCS has a history of "complex transactions" lots like the Multi-Disciplinary Consultancy Framework and the Multi-Specialism Lot on Consultancy One which are really only accessible to big firms, but once they are awarded customers suddenly decide their project with a handful of consultants are "complex" and so decide to put the work through this lot to ensure they only have to consider bids from the big firms and ignore the SMEs on the general lots. CCS does nothing to stop this, like putting a minimum value on any call offs from these lots, and all call off contracts are the responsibility of the individual buyer so they don't care. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">So this is what CCS has spent months working on. A total
shambles again, and the main winners will be big consultancy firms, the kind of
people who have regular meetings with CCS to discuss things like this and
probably who advise them how to write tenders like this. CCS is ruining the
consultancy market and the chance to do something decent in it for the next
four years. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">We can only hope that the replacements for the CCS Chief Exec and
Head of Professional Services can bring in some changes so that when this
expires they can replace it with something that works. But I hold out little
hope.</span></div>
charliemiddletonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07520339154510986628noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4666316934883259371.post-76691938855746079732017-11-23T04:47:00.000-08:002017-11-27T07:36:33.087-08:00Management Consultancy Framework Two - how not to do procurement<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To make fundamental errors with a procurement once is
unfortunate, to do so twice is unforgiveable – particularly when the
procurement is being led by the UK’s central buying agency and supposed centre
of excellence in such matters. But that is sadly the tale with Crown Commercial
Service’s efforts to procure a business consultancy framework to use across the
UK.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Almost a year ago CCS went to market with the Management
Consultancy Framework, and attracted 177 bids for the key “business consultancy”
lot. Several months later and just before awarding the contract, CCS decided to
withdraw that lot as there was a “construct error” which “did not adequately
assess the Bidder's quality of delivery to the level required”. No more
information was provided at the time, but there were rumours that the reason
was that the major consultancy firms had not managed to secure places and the
framework would therefore have no credibility.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">CCS announced at the time that they would go to market for a
replacement framework in the middle of October after a market engagement, but (as
is sadly often the case) were over-ambitious with their dates. Back in
September they ran two webinars with suppliers to update on their thinking, and
have now provided a final update webinar to suppliers before issuing the tender
just before Christmas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The new framework is going to have five lots. Lot 1 will be
for “general” business consultancy, usually for smaller assignments up to 12
months for a single customer. Lot 2 is for commercial and procurement. Lot 3 is
for “complex and transformation” consultancy with multiple workstreams and
often over 12 months. Lot 4 is “strategic consultancy” such as giving advice to
perm secs and ministers. Finally, Lot 5 is for a neutral vendor. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So what are the problems?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Firstly, the whole idea of a framework is to make life
easier for the customers. Rather than running an OJEU Open Tender and having to
evaluate dozens or hundreds of submissions, frameworks should have a small
number of suppliers pre-selected for their capability to deliver, and then
allow the customer to choose between those by running a mini-competition. On
lots 1 and 2, CCS has decided to have unlimited numbers of suppliers, negating
the core purpose of having a framework.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">On the webinar, CCS
cited the “success” of the G-Cloud framework which adopts a similar approach
whilst having around 2,000 suppliers. They glossed over the fact that G-Cloud
is and has always been massively abused to provide a route for customers to choose
their preferred suppliers generally for services that have very little to do
with implementing Cloud technologies. This abuse is facilitated through the specialist Cloud services lot which is supposed to be for support specifically with transitioning to or implementing Cloud computing. However, since
G-Cloud was introduced, 77% of the spend has been on these “specialist Cloud services” with only 23% on actual Cloud services - £1.86bn of spend to implement £559m of actual Cloud delivery. In the cash-strapped
NHS, for instance, NHS Connecting for Health, Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS
Trust and Monitor have between them spent £35m on “specialist Cloud services”
but actually only purchased £21,000 of “real” Cloud services.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">CCS’s approach to lots 1 and 2 is to have a series of “service
filters” where suppliers have to demonstrate they have previously delivered
services in the appropriate region, sector and specialism, and that at call off
customers can use this to filter the suppliers they work with. This creates two
key problems. Firstly, this is unlikely to reduce the number of “capable”
suppliers significantly. If a Government department wants a supplier to, for
example, deliver some project management consultancy in London, it is likely
that there still be dozens of suppliers who can deliver this and they will have
to invite all of them to pitch for the work. In reality this is little different
from running an Open tender. The second problem is that it makes it difficult
for suppliers – especially SMEs – to break into new markets, as CCS will not
allow you to tick the service filter to say you are capable of working in, say,
the West Midlands region until you have experience of working there, and you
cannot get that experience until you can secure contracts there. We live in a connected
world and there is no reason that a supplier who has delivered work in, say,
London could not do the same in Birmingham, but under CCS’s service filters
they are unlikely even to be considered. This is possibly also illegal under
procurement law, as customers should invite all suppliers capable of performing
work to pitch for it. Public procurement is not supposed to be anti-competitive
by maintaining the status quo of suppliers, but that seems to be the
consequence (intentional or not) of CCS’s approach.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It is not clear whether CCS will allow direct award for lots
1 and 2, rather than going out to competition. If so with hundreds of suppliers
on the lot (and in reality with most of them capable of delivering) this will
just allow customers to pick their favoured suppliers for work and again be
anti-competitive and maintain the status quo.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">CCS are compounding the problems on these lots by stating
that it is difficult to assess quality at the framework award level (despite having
done so for virtually every other framework), and so they are going to have a
limited approach to assessing quality on these lots. Given the stated reason
for cancelling the award of Lot 1 of the Management Consultancy Framework was that
it “did not adequately assess the Bidder's quality of delivery”, dumbing down
the quality evaluation at framework award and allowing an unlimited number of
suppliers to pass the threshold seems a bizarre solution to this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Why would CCS want to adopt an approach with an
unlimited number of suppliers with simplified quality questions? The most
likely answer is speed of procurement – on previous iterations of the consultancy
framework the evaluation process has taken several months to pick the best
10-20 suppliers to award contracts to for the next four years, but having made
a mess with Lot 1 of the Management Consultancy Framework and with Consultancy
ONE expiring in a few weeks, they are desperate to get something out and appear
happy to sacrifice quality and something that actually works in favour of
speed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Lots 3 and 4, complex and strategic consultancy, are more conventional
with 20 suppliers for each lot. These may well work satisfactorily, and are likely
to the ones that attract the major firms. Unless these are properly policed, as
all the lots are available for any size of assignment, so some customers
could decide that all of their assignments are “complex” or “transformational”
and so need to go through Lot 3 where they will not have to deal with the myriad
of SMEs and instead can just target a small number of big suppliers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Lot 5, the provision of a neutral vendor, is an enigma and
potentially very dangerous. The stated aim of this lot is to provide a route to
market for consultancies who are not on any other lot and for services that are
not already catered for. There are few types of consultancy that would not already be covered by an existing framework, so the real
purpose of this lot would appear to be for suppliers who have not
achieved a place on any suitable “real” lot of the frameworks, but where the customer
decides (probably with no competitive process) that they want to use them. In other words, this lot is just there to allow customers to ignore the procurement rules and pick a supplier they want to work with.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In the challenging times facing the UK with continuing austerity
requirements coupled with Brexit, we cannot afford to make a mess of the way
the country identifies the most appropriate suppliers to provide consultancy.
Sadly, CCS appears to have decided that it is more important for them to put
something in place quickly rather than something that works. They have been
swayed by talking to customers and suppliers who like the renegade nature of
G-Cloud and just want procurement rules to get out of the way and let them work
with whomever they want, rather than doing their job and doing the right thing
in accordance both with the rules and best practice. CCS will no doubt get
something in place by next April, but it is highly questionable whether this
will deliver a workable solution for their customers or the best value for
money for the country.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
charliemiddletonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07520339154510986628noreply@blogger.com0