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14 March 2012 | Adam Leach
A panel of senior buyers has
weighed in on a debate over whether framework agreements are being used too
much and limiting their power to do their jobs.
The topic was raised during a
live debate at the Procurex National conference in Birmingham yesterday when a supplier
in the audience said her company had put time and resources into joining
frameworks only to find that little buying occurred from them. In response,
Eddie Regan, senior procurement consultant at BIP Solutions, argued that the UK had gone “framework
crazy”.
He added: “Everybody seems to
want to create frameworks for everything under the sun. Nobody goes out and
buys any longer, at least, in a lot of organisations, they just look for the
convenient framework to use and it’s a bit of a worry.”
David Smith, commercial director
at the Department for Work and Pensions, expressed sympathy with the questioner if
the framework she was on had been used out of “idleness rather than direction”
but defended their effectiveness when used correctly. “Frameworks can be a very
powerful tool and a good tool in terms of flexibility, business continuity and
speed, if they are tight and managed and used, but not if they’re let out of
convenience.”
Simon Lydiard, head of corporate procurement at the Department for Transport, said: “What I’ve been struggling with a
little bit recently is a number of internal clients who want frameworks, and I
think sometimes, that’s because they haven’t deeply articulated their
requirements.
“Sometimes we’re a little bit
lazy in the public sector in that we simply create relationships that provide
easy access to particular suppliers. We need to spend more time helping our
clients to really understand their requirements so we can take them to market
in the most effective way.”
Michael Lee, project manager, Hampshire County Council, argued that procurement
needed to focus more on the early stages of the process. “For me, the big
interest is for procurement to get more involved in the front end of decision
making. It’s about identifying the need and evaluating different options to
meet that need before we get anywhere near a procurement exercise.”