£42m public body framework decision delayed
£42m public body framework decision delayed The Drum has learned that the advertising services framework – currently being compiled through a procurement tender being led by purchasing agency Scotland Excel – has been delayed as the results are "re-evaluated".
A spokesperson for Scotland Excel confirmed that the results had been delayed and were under review.
The spokesperson said: “The tender process is being re-evaluated at the moment with the recommendations being sent to a governance committee on the 4 December when a formal announcement is likely to be made.”
They also confirmed that 10 companies were involved in having their submissions re-evaulated by an internal team of experts and that the process may or may not affect who the preferable supplier would be.
In July, companies were invited to tender for the £42m advertising services framework to handle services including recruitment advertising, public notices and media buying for public bodies including Strathclyde Police, Strathclyde Fire & Rescue and Glasgow Housing Association.
The award criteria for the contract was published as: Financial – 60%, Service – 20%, Quality – 18% and Contract administration – 2%.
It is rumoured that the final ten companies which are involved in the re-evaluation process are Ten Alps MTD, Penna Barkers, Euro RSCG Riley, Thirtythree Scotland, MediaVision, Advertising Works, TMP Worldwide, Works Communications, FeatherBrooksbank and Spiritmedia, although no one from Scotland Excel would confirm or deny the shortlist.
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Comments
Reading between the lines they didn't get the winners they wanted. May they get the service and quality they deserve.
Public Sector procurement, a fair and transparent method to acquire best value for the taxpayer.
Or rather a smokescreen designed to deflect blame from the ineffectual jobsworth who has by some stroke of luck found themselves in the position to appoint an agency to do a job they themselves barely understand. But only after wasting countless industry hours to arrive at the wrong answer requiring a re-writing of the rules in order to award the job to the agencies who everyone knew should probably have been awarded the contract in the first place.
"Best value for the taxpayer"- how can this possibly be true is quality is valued at 20% and finace at 60%...? Thats basically Aldi instead of Waitrose.
We've been through a government procurement process many times (not for Frameworks - for actual jobs); each time is identical; we get to an interivew panel to be "grilled" by 6 or 7 people who don't actually know what they are talking about. We have won some and lost some - we don't know why becuase the feedback is at best facile and usuually completely useless and irrelevant to the actual pitch.
Message to Richrd at The Drum:
I think everyone would like to know how much the Scottish Govt spends on its procurement depts and processes (inc hire of meeting rooms, time for the flock of other dept staff to attend pitches etc); how it's performance is measured and how much actual value it has brought to the tax payer (it's costs v savings attained). Why don't you get your best journalist on the FOI case?
* And since they are completely unaware of how long it takes to pull together a strong pitch document (inc PTQs, actual pitch doc, presentation etc) - the Govt always seems to be very surprised by the numbler of submissions and the quality / depth of each one - maybe the indutry up here could work out how many staff hours per year are spent on dealing with this..?
Can anyone still be bothered to entertain these public sector tender charades? I know that having worked with public sector clients for years we, as an agency, have decided that the time and effort required to be spent on each tender coupled with the generally small budgets isn't worth the 'rewards'.
We have also completed several public sector jobs over the last few years but have now decided to unregister from the publiccontractscotland.gov.uk tender site as we are no longer willing to waste our time and resources pitching for Scottish Govt / Local Govt controlled tenders.
Too many companies find themselves addicted to the public sector teat I'm afraid.
Guy Robertsons comment is 'spot on'. How can you offer discounts on 427 titles when you don't have a contract - and do you have the patience to complete such a tender?
Unfortunately procurement officers are 'jack of all trades and masters of none'. They seem to think that buying advertising is the same as buying paper clips.
Some agencies seem to be willing to play the game. They are offering hypothetical discounts that have not been agreed with media owners. Are they building up a portfolio of public sector clients so they can bully media into accepting the discounts they have 'guessed'. Can anyone comment on this?
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