So I stopped waving the flag.

dxw’s experience of COI’s frameworks has been good, in practice. But those awful terms that we agreed to a few years ago aren’t at all reflected in our day-to-day client work. I had a quick look over them before I wrote this post, but before today, I hadn’t read them since we were originally applying to join the ASL.

I do recall a project we did a couple of years ago where the project manager at COI stuck to the letter of those terms. There were a few minor amendments to the contract that we agreed with the client over the course of the project, and we had to go through a formal COI change request before we could invoice for the work. Despite the fact that the client had already agreed to the change, and we had already done it and delivered the project. It was all just a bit silly, and added nothing of value.

Things would have been rather better if the framework terms had been designed to set the scene for proper, agile, digital working. And if the PM had felt empowered to make sure that the delivery of the project went awesomely smoothly, rather than feeling obliged to go through the motions of an overbearing, pointless process…

Lawyers.

As a contract is, in essence, a legal agreement, it inevitably has, at the heart of its creation and existence, those abstruse and abstract creatures who will simply not allow the kind of jargon free, user-friendly contracts that any other right-minded individual would like to work with.

However, I’d like to think that at least some fresh thinking may help to create, at least, some discussion of such issues, good piece overalll and compelling. Thanks.

I guess there’s the issue of frameworks vs projects, which is worth remembering. Procurement is about briefing projects (to an extent), and like Simon says, insurance (to an extent) – it’s also about the legitimate protection of public money from nefarious or unstable suppliers, and a well-meaning desire to promote various kinds of social good (equality, employment rights, the environment, etc). A lot of the problems in the procurements we see these days is that the ‘protection of public money’ and ‘pursuit of social good’ objectives go a bit too far, to the extent that they become the domain of procurement and legal experts, to the exclusion of the even more important goals.

So when the process works fairly well – and I think COI’s frameworks circa 2005 would be an example of that – then the hassles of demonstrating the track record and financial soundness to get on the framework can be separated from the more important task of briefing individual projects clearly. Most of the companies on those frameworks were various kinds of SMEs (though few micro SMEs, hence the Approved Supplier List introduced in later years), and as someone who both bought through them and won business through them – they basically worked. There were other problems with COI, but I wouldn’t count its frameworks and SME management among them.

Projects need briefs for sure, but I guess I’m saying procurement frameworks can be SME friendly too.