Annual State of NHSScotland Assets and Facilities Report for 2014

Annex I

Review of Scottish Public Sector Procurement In Construction

Background

In October 2013, Ken Lewandowski and Robin Crawford published the report on their review. Their vision was of an approach to public sector construction procurement which achieves better collaboration in design-led, efficient and effective procurement and which has regard to sustainability in all senses of the word. They believed that the power of public spending must be harnessed to benefit the sustainability of the Scottish economy to create and support jobs as well as to provide the infrastructure which will keep Scotland working for generations to come.

The report made 67 recommendations covering a number of broad themes: leadership; sectoral capacity/capability; management information; innovation; technology and sustainability; and prioritisation and co-ordination of investment planning.

On the 14th May 2014, the Deputy First Minister announced in a written parliamentary answer that she was asking the Public Procurement Reform Board to oversee the delivery of the report's recommendations and that the Scottish Government accepted all the recommendations except, for the time being, the appointment of the Chief Construction Adviser.

The Scottish Government, working with the Scottish Futures Trust and Construction Scotland's Industry Leadership Group, is developing a programme to deliver the recommendations of the review prepared by Robin and Ken

Broadly speaking, the Scottish Government will lead work streams and projects which relate to the development of the policy environment, with SFT leading those which are more about delivery on the ground and Construction Scotland Industry Leadership Group (CSILG) delivering work streams around industry best practice.

All recognise the need to engage and involve key players across all parts of the sector.

The implementation of the report's recommendations will represent a major change programme across the public sector and the Scottish Government is committed to playing its full part to support it. Leaders of other public bodies are strongly encouraged to consider what they can do to develop capability in relation to construction procurement.

In line with the review's first recommendation, the construction procurement policy function within the Scottish Government has been strengthened, and good progress is already being made on the following recommendations

• Establishing a mechanism under the existing PPRB to bring together key stakeholders to drive the procurement reform agenda as it relates to construction.
• Commissioning research into design led procurement.
• Developing new guidelines for certain aspects of the operation of the hubCo model.
• The use of project bank accounts in Scotland.
• The collation of Sectoral records of project costs, including what they were estimated to cost at business plan and contract award stages and actual cost on completion to provide meaningful benchmark figures for the public sector in Scotland.