Public procurement

The Construction Industry Council (CIC) has responded to the consultation on public procurement.

An extract of its response says: “The CLC is broadly supportive of efforts to consolidate existing procedures into three procedures. We do wish to highlight a couple of issues relating to the proposed flexible and open procedures.

“The flexible procedure provides a welcome opportunity to design procurements to best suit the subject. However, with this flexibility comes a risk that each procurement becomes, in essence, a bespoke exercise that suppliers must prepare for. This potentially creates a patchwork approach to procurement with no consistency between competitions. This can drive cost and delay for suppliers.

“As such, while there should be flexibility, there should also be guidance as to how to operate within this flexibility. This will help to support public bodies, particularly those that are relatively short on resources and expertise, to make sure that the flexible approaches they operate deliver the intended outcomes. This guidance should also reflect how flexible procedures can incorporate sector specific objectives, such as those in the Construction Playbook.”    

Read the full response at bit.ly/construction_playbook 

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