Author Archives: Hugh Andrew

I was very interested in the recent article on NHS procurement. As a small business owner I have had multiple dealing with state procurement systems in all their awful grandeur over the years. They may seem dull but in a wholesale reformation of them lies a method of unlocking a massively more efficient and productive state.

UK procurement rules were originally set up to align with EU Directives and with the laudable objective of providing a level platform for competitive tendering for major projects. However intention and execution rarely coincide with regard to British bureaucracy and, while European governments seem to be able to use procedures as they were designed, as they understand and work to the underlying principles, the UK and Scotland used the creation of an extra ‘process’ to:

1. Set up a bureaucracy of procurement independent of any real control. Like most bureaucracies this validates itself by indefinite and uncontrolled expansion into areas where it is remarkably ill suited (in Scotland the main procurement body is technically under the control of all 32 Scottish local authorities which means it is de facto under no control at all)
2. Validates its own success.
3. Instead of simplifying process creates a giddying layer of documentation, gold plating and multiple entering. This of course requires an ever expanding bureaucracy to administer.
4. Massively expands requirements on interested suppliers by requiring a morass of irrelevant certifications and documentation. This essentially excludes small and medium sized businesses and instead of expanding the potential number of suppliers slashes them.
5. Since procurement process is deliberately disconnected from the purpose for which it is intended, every project is simply compressed into one ‘standard’ form without any regard for its suitability. Since those who construct the forms have minimal understanding of what they are trying to do they often enshrine economic lunacy in their construction. Since the process is all and its validation is by endless repetition then innovation is completely discouraged.
6. The result of this is that those who do tender build in an ‘idiocy’ premium to cover themselves against the obvious incomprehension of the process. Both this and the relatively small number of suppliers who work their way through results not in price competitiveness but substantially enhanced pricing.

In an even more Kafkaesque development procurement bodies will often respond to such criticisms by inviting winners of tenders to help refine their procurement processes! Funnily enough those winner then tend to win repeat tenders!