Speaking at a Treasury-led conference on Wednesday, Milburn stated that public-private partnerships, design and construct, prime contracting and the pursuit of framework agreements should be the favoured forms of government procurement.
Traditional forms of construction procurement were castigated for making it harder to eliminate waste and achieve value for money on jobs “where the detailed design is largely completed before the main contractor, subcontractors and specialist suppliers become involved”.
The guidance goes on to say that traditional forms should only be used where there is a very clear case that they can deliver better value for money than the alternatives. “Better value for money” is to be defined in terms of whole-life costs and overall performance.
The guidance also calls for a single point of responsibility on projects. Although any member of the building team can take this role, consultants have been alarmed by the prospect. They are concerned that, in practice, it will strengthen the position of the main contractor and weaken the consultant’s status within the team.
Poor handling of design has been a fundamental fault line in construction process
Alan Milburn
Milburn attempted to reassure them on this point by emphasising the importance of design. He said: “Good design and value for money are not incompatible. Poor handling of design has been a fundamental fault line in the handling of the construction process so far.” Pressed by architect Robin Nicholson, the president of the Construction Industry Council, to repeat his commitment to design, Milburn said: “From the point of view of the taxpayer, not integrating design into the construction process makes very little sense at all.
“I understand the concerns of your profession, but give it a whirl.” Milburn also said he wants government departments to start playing a bigger role in the Movement for Innovation, which was set up in the wake of last year’s Egan report.
He announced that the government is also planning to set up additional training to encourage civil servants to take on board the best-value ethos. Roadshows are scheduled to begin in September.
Milburn also said the Treasury was planning to compare the construction performance of the government department with those overseas and, later this year, the Treasury would carry out a poll to measure contractors’ satisfaction with government as a client – the aim being to get a 90% approval rating by March 2000.
