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The South East Lincolnshire Councils Shared Services Partnership is stated to be a “ground breaking”, “bold and ambitious” new alliance between the Boston, East Lindsey and South Holland councils – the largest collaborative local authority relationship of its kind in…

The foundation of effective contract management is a suite of essential documents which allow managers to keep track of performance and expenditure on their contracts, while dramatically reducing the time required to do so. Key documents that support effective contract…

Your Challenge – You are overseeing a major project that involves a significant service delivery transformation or the procurement of a complex IT solution. You may be engaging in a new strategic supplier relationship or need to improve one that is…

They say that in a crisis you find out who you really are. In fact, US founding father, Thomas Paine said it far more eloquently than that in 1776 when he wrote: “These are the times that try men’s souls.…

The Client-Side PFI Manager is the person in the client organisation with direct responsibility for managing the operational PFI contract. The management of operational PFI contracts consists of frequent, ad hoc and periodic activities. Frequent activities are those that need…

New York-based turnaround management specialists, Alvarez & Marsal, were appointed as administrators of NMC Health after irregularities were discovered in the company’s accounts. By the end of 2020, it was reported they had issued a ‘preliminary notice’ of a potential…

A strategic partnership is only as strong as the commercial trust you share. When things go wrong it is important you consider contract termination as the ‘nuclear option’; the option of last resort when every other reasonable mechanism to improve…

According to the Government Technology Innovation Strategy policy paper, published in June, the UK is “a world leader in using innovative techniques enabled by technology to deliver outstanding public services”. The Government Digital Service (GDS) was created to support this…

Projects rarely run strictly according to plan. The longer your strategic relationships must last, and the higher the number of individuals, teams and departments involved, the greater the opportunity for things to veer off course. It’s at this stage that…

It has never been more important to ensure that your complex service delivery (outsourcing) relationships succeed. But how can this be achieved in an environment where it seems so commonplace that external service providers fail to achieve expected business outcomes.…

Service delivery innovation is the ‘holy grail’ solution sought by many in the UK across both the private and public sectors since we entered the austerity era. We have all been asked to do more with less. But is innovation…

When setting up any transformational programme or partnership, one preliminary aspect that can’t be overstated is the need for stakeholder communication and collaboration. Unfortunately, there seem to be many in the NHS procurement community who believe that the Department of…

In 2013, Police Scotland took the brave position to not ‘make do’ with an off-the-shelf system, but to build their own that would support “new standardised national policing processes and daily policing operations and investigations”. The i6 project was conceived…

A date has been set for Cornwall Council to meet BT in the High Court. On 1 December 2015, both sides will have the opportunity to explain just why the ten-year £300m outsourcing contract that bound them together was ended…

When a civil servant in the Ministry of Justice spotted some discrepancies in Serco’s paperwork during routine contract renewal processes, nobody could have quite imagined what impact this was going to have – both on the UK Government and Serco.…

How to plan a negotiation in an exit strategy? Many would assume that all that’s needed is to follow the roadmap set out in a contract or to prove some deviation from a contractual obligation so then the relationship could…

Does it matter if the average member of the public trusts the border control agency in charge of immigration into our country? What about trust in those running local GP surgeries or some of our NHS services? Then there are…

The complexity of strategic partnerships can be such that when one side finds itself unable to deliver on expected milestones, even the most minor concerns have the capacity to snowball into project-threatening issues if left unchecked. Don’t remain in the…

As news circulated about Serco’s fourth profit warning in a year and plans for a rights issue to the tune of £550m to stabilise their battered and beleaguered balance sheet, we have seen an increase in contact by some of…

Information technology services are by far the most common reason for outsourcing, managed services, and strategic commissioning across both the private and public sectors. In our experience, it is also one of the most contentious, being synonymous with poor service…

Given the rumours, murmurs and announcements of the last few weeks, BT Global Services’ (BT GS) customers are undoubtedly all asking themselves the same questions – are BT going to sell off their outsourcing division? This question keeps arising as…

Anyone who knows me will appreciate that for good or for bad, I’m a strong advocate of the work of the National Audit Office (NAO). Yes, at times they can be a little overcritical, as those running complex strategic relationships…

It is notoriously difficult to get visibility of the quantified value transformational outsourcing agreements are (or are not) providing.. By their very nature these agreements are complex, as is the management of the relationships that must be formed to ensure…

We have already gone into quite some detail about the new EU Procurement directive due to hit our shores in the very near future – in fact, Cabinet Office consultations suggest that early 2015 is now more likely for their…

Responding to criticisms from their overview and scrutiny committee that their first report in February this year, regarding the lessons learned from the Southwest One (SW1) venture, was not comprehensive enough, Mr Kevin Nacey, Finance Director from Somerset County Council…

The outsourcing market is one of the fastest growing sectors in the UK today. Local government contracts alone, were worth an estimated £30.5bn last year. Understanding the size and shape of such a rapidly growing marketplace is, therefore, crucial if…

Preliminary Market Engagement (PME) is an incredibly useful step in the procurement process, especially when one of the more restrictive procedures is to be selected. However, essential though it may be, PME has until now been largely ignored. New EU…

Supplier relationships can be complicated, they can be messy and they can at times be self- destructive. Poor planning, insufficient research, ambiguous contracts and conflicting agendas – all can contribute. These errors or omissions don’t even need to be substantial…

With the 2015 general election rapidly approaching, understanding the politics behind public-sector outsourcing is essential for organisations that are considering tendering soon for these lucrative, though often very complex, relationships. Things seem to be getting quite politically polarised – Shadow Secretary of…

This blog post is the fourth in a series that has looked at some of the most significant upcoming changes to the EU Procurement Rules Directive* and discussed the possible impacts across the Public Sector. In this concluding post, we’ll…

In preparation for my speech at the “What to do When IT Goes Wrong” conference next week, I have been casting my mind back to memorable IT projects I have worked on in the past. One thing is for sure…