Before embarking on your procurement journey, you will need to be clear about what your need is from your capability analysis and your project deliverables and how those may be deliverable by your organisation.
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Before embarking on your procurement journey, you will need to be clear about what your need is from your capability analysis and your project deliverables and how those may be deliverable by your organisation.
Check your organisation’s procurement strategy
If your organisation doesn’t have one, then you should support your strategy team in developing one that includes the types of project and outcome that you are looking for.
Create a procurement plan for your project
By this point you should be clear about what your procurement is trying to achieve, and the potential risks, responsibilities, benefits, and outcomes of the project. You can capture your current understanding in a procurement plan. This can be part of the business case – commercial dimension, or as a separate annex or document. Talk to your procurement team to understand how they want you to engage.
The procurement plan / business case – commercial dimension contains:
- how the project/programme is structured and how it manages risk
- who is contractually responsible for project risks
- who is responsible for the design and when specialists become involved in the design and delivery work
- how and when the design team is employed
- how the construction/installation teams are appointed and when their involvement can start
- how the operational phase will be managed
- how the project/programme is evaluated.
Check your internal procurement policy
- By now, you should have engaged with your procurement team to be clear on the processes and requirements.
- Every local authority should have an internal procurement policy. Being tailored to the specific needs of the local authority, these policies have higher priority than central government’s procurement guidelines. Thus, it is always advised to consult the internal procurement policy at the very beginning of the pre-procurement activities.
- It is worth mentioning that internal procurement policies may imply a variation of the steps presented in this page.
- Refer to your procurement team or legal department.
Your internal policies will help you cover:
- institutional due diligence (to assess the capacity of the authority to handle the project and how the deficiencies can be met)
- defining the whole procurement process, including identification of the stages at which governance approval is required (if not already defined)
- project development and due diligence (feasibility study, business case analysis, structure of a bankable project deal, basic terms of contract, etc.)
- evaluation criteria and committees
- a contract negotiation team (needed at a later stage).
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