Streamline your purchasing pipeline management with airSlate SignNow

How to create outlook signature

okay so let's um let's begin so yeah good question why are we here so um contract management is given much more prominence in the procurement act 2023 than it um is in the current regime under the um public contracts regulations 20 uh 2015 um so there are a few sections that specifically cover off um contract management so um one of these is that um under Section 52 before entering into a public contract with an estimated value of more than5 million a Contracting Authority must set at least three key performance indicators in respect of the contract and a Contracting Authority must publish any kpis that it sets under Section 521 and then under Section 71 to at least once in every 12-month period during the life cycle of the contract and on termination the Contracting Authority must firstly assess performance against the key performance indicators and publish information specified in regulations that are brought in under Section 95 now we do now have draft transparency regulations um they have been drafted and um should be in force I suspect pretty soon um and they do indeed contain that information and um all of those points that I've touched on briefly in this introductory slide I will cover in more detail as we go through the session so what will we cover today so um planning your contracts for the year and what I'm calling the big Clash for the education sector um and we'll touch on that F uh sort of at the beginning um when do you need to start thinking about your kpis and contract management um we'll think a little bit about how to agree those kpis and what's an acceptable um level of um negotiation on those um how to monitor your kpis and manage contracts well the reporting requirements um and uh sort of General Performance Management so the first element of this is transparency now this is um it kind of really is the golden thread that that runs through all of the new procurement um regime so they are embedded into every stage of the procurement process um and as I've mentioned briefly already um there was consultation on secondary legislation last summer we now have the transparency regulations um which will be brought into Force shortly and there is a wide range of notices that must be published and this is when we're talking about transparency a lot of that is in the notices that the ACT requires um you as Contracting authorities to publish um and um the ones that we are going to be most focused on today is the pipeline notice and the contract performance notice um and basically any procurements that go live after the go live date or started after the go life date will be subject to the ACT we do now have a date that is pretty much set in stone it's the 28th of October 2024 um which means we are about 6 months away from that from that date now um and the PCR will continue to apply to those procurements started before that date um I will just briefly say that this is very this this presentation is is about the procurement act um I am conscious that we may have colleagues from Scottish universities um on this call now um the procurement Act is not um generally um going to be applicable to to Scotland um Scotland has made the decision to retain the the existing regime which is much more closely linked to the EU um I am sure that over time there will be elements of that that that change to bring a level of consistency but at the moment these the the Act only applies to um either reserved matters that are um still procured by the UK government um which for the most part will not affect universities and or um procurements that cover both England and Scotland and it could well be that there are some um smaller consortia of universities that work together for various reasons that cross the border between England and Scotland and then um Scottish universities may well have to be um aware of the um uh the intricacies and the the detail of the procurement act 2023 but certainly on a day-to-day basis the majority of activity for Scottish universities will remain um under the the current regulations so let's talk about pipeline management first so section 93 requires a pipeline notice to be published setting out details of proposed contracts valued at over2 million per contract however this does only apply to authorities that consider that they will pay more than1 million pound under their relevant cost contracts every year an a relevant contract is any contract for the supply of goods services or Works other than Exempted contracts contract set out in schedule two of the procurement act um and cover things like you know what we have at the moment teal contracts um uh horizontal Arrangements which are based on the Hamburg waste exemption um we have you know Financial Services land transactions Legal Services if it's um litigation um you know all the normal the normal range that we that we know and love at the moment are all Exempted contracts set out under in schedule two of the ACT um the 100 million um uh does include uh contracts that the authority expects to direct award without competition so that is an interesting um uh reflection on on how government expects um Contracting authorities to be able to anticipate some of that now obviously there are going to be some that come under the um urgency Provisions for direct award that you will not be able to to set out in your in your pipeline notices but um but I think the important thing to to to sort of recognize is is what comes within that 100 million pounds of spend so it is it is spend on contract but that could be um you know Capital spend that goes for um you know for for building projects or for um it infrastructure refreshes for example um it could be you know Works contracts um for the um you know development of a new Laboratory um Services contract so anything that relates to those to those contracts for services Goods or Works um will will come within 100 million will come within that 100 million pounds um so for some um for some universities that that may not be an issue for very small universities but there are a lot of universities that obviously do um meet that a threshold um it's very much seen as a positive um for suppliers and for preparing um the market for procurement because it lets the market know about upcoming opportunities um and it is really something that uh Contracting authorities can start thinking about now in terms of how to plan procurements and resources um and even when there is no requirement to publish as in you don't meet that 100 million pound threshold um it is a um a really good thing to get in place and to um and to start um having a sort of best practice approach to um planning your procurements um well in advance so the big Clash um so this is an issue for Hy and for the other parts of the education sector as well because the financial year to which a pipeline not pipeline notices have to apply is currently defined in section 9 34 as a 12month period beginning with the 1 of April following the day on which um the section comes into Force so basically on the basis that the ACT comes into Force pretty much fully on the 28th of October 2024 we are talking about the 1st of April 2025 as the first date and the way the legislation works is that you have I think it's a 56 day period no idea where that comes from um a 56-day period um in which which to publish your pipeline notice after the 1st of April 2025 and then it's every successive 12 months so how do we Square this circle for H um well I'm afraid to say that currently there is no no simple answer to that um one could argue that you take a purpose of impo a purposive approach to the interpretation of the legislation and think that the financial year was chosen to start on the 1st of April because that's when for government departments and for the majority of the public seor um that is when the financial year starts so local government um NHS um all start on the 1 of April and arguably for parts of the public sector Contracting authorities that um uh have a different Financial year that that would be acceptable but I think it is really worth getting more clarity on on this um and um and I'm certainly um talking to people about how best we can we can raise this with cap office and get an answer um but the good news is that because it's not the earliest we will have to do anything about this actually publish a pipeline notice is April 2025 we we do have a bit more time to get this one sorted out um but at the moment there is a definite clash between um what we um uh what what he needs in terms of a financial year and what the legislation says so it is a bit of a watch this space so let's move on to contract management and how we Factor this into the procurement so is this a procurement issue at all or is it just a contract management issue well I can't stress strongly enough my view that it is not helpful to look at procurement and contract Management in isolation from each other because the procurement a good procurement sets up a good contract a good procurement should include a lot of information about the contract to make sure that it can then be managed properly and that it is delivered properly because all the parties understand exactly what they should be doing um and sometimes setting kpis even at the moment even before we've had this obligation to publish our kpis um is a difficult Balancing Act and that is because um there is often a tension between the level of um certainty and detail that a Contracting Authority wants to get from its supplier when it's looking at Performance Management and what the supplier sees as a reasonable um level of um of oversight and of information that needs to be provided to its customers so inappropriate and burdens some kpis can have a significant impact on both the procurement process and the contract delivery but this is only likely to become more impactful and important when biders know that the kpis that they agree to during a procurement process are then going to be monitored and reported on publicly because from a suppliers perspective you can completely understand why they think that um that they want the kpis to be relatively light HT sure relatively easy to meet so that they are more likely to be able to meet them so that the reporting is positive and we'll look later on in the slides as to what how how those ratings work for for kpis um but it is it is going to become more and more important to biders that they that they get what they view as acceptable kpis as part of a contract um this could lead to delay in the process and also to the post award negotiations with a successful supplier which obviously puts you know the start of the contract at risk to the Contracting Authority um that there there will be and and I don't really touch on this today um because it's kind of a topic of its own right contract modifications generally but changes to kpis could well be part of a contract modification to correct problems at a later date um but obviously the more you can get right now the better the better you will be so one thing to note is that while the pipeline notice has to publish contracts over a value of 2 million the requirement to include three kpis in contract only bites for contract of more than five million um and so for contracts with a lower value there is no obligation to have these three kpis that are measured against and also even if a contract has a value with more than 5 million if a kpi cannot be properly kind of can assess the performance of a contract um then you don't have to have them now me and and my team at Brand Jacobson um have struggled to think of many many reasons why that would not be the case um but one thing that I did just want to sort of pause on for a second in terms of the contracts that may well come into into this bracket is in relation to construction contracts and contracts for works because obviously that 5 million threshold um is close to the threshold current threshold for Works contracts um Capital build um capital projects are often some of the most um high value contracts that a university will have and of course they often use standard contracts like jct's or NEC contracts now I'm not a construction lawyer I find construction standard construction contracts not always in alignment with public procurement principles and how you are meant to draft contracts from a public procurement perspective um and they do not do contract Management in the same way as say a contract that we would draft for an IT solution so actually it's it's going to be really important um to think about how some of these standard contracts can have kpis written into them when at the moment they are not they're not really set up for that for that type of performance monitoring all the time um so I think it's I just really wanted to sort of emphasize those kinds of contracts because I think that's where a lot more thought we'll have to go into um to setting up these kpis and as I said because of the value threshold for the kpis and the the value of Construction contract I think quite often those two are going to go in hand um so during the life of the contract authorities are going to have to proactively monitor their contracts against these kpis so that they can do the reporting which we're going to come on to in in slides near the end um and overall it is so important to get all of this right so to get the you know the right kpis the right um sort of level of kpis and agree the performance monitoring with your supplier because um the consequences to suppliers is that this information could be used to be for them to be excluded from future procurements due to poor performance again I will touch on that later on but I guess what I'm wanting to do here is really set the scene on um as to why all of this is really important to think about really early on in your procurement so that you can get it right and make sure that you're comfortable that at a later stage this is all going to work properly so there are some exceptions to having to have kpis and measure and Report um framework agreements is one although as I've said at the bottom of that slide this does not mean call of contracts from Frameworks do not need to have kpis in them they do they are contracts in their own right um and you can tell from the legislation that they talk about Frameworks and public contracts that are awarded from a framework so public contracts very much still with within this in terms of callof contract but I do think it's going to be a really interesting point to think about in terms of at what stage do those kpis go in will those kpis be um on a call of contract specific basis or will framework authorities um sort of central purchasing bodies um will they set standard kpis for all Call of contracts at the point of setting up the framework um and this is something that a colleague and I are going to be having to give some more thought to in a few weeks we when we're delivering some training to government legal department so um it's something that um I think there will be more to think about um over the coming weeks and months and we will do our best to share those thoughts with you at the appropriate time um a few of the contracts which you know utilities obviously unlikely to affect universities but concession contracts are not covered by this and light touch regime contracts which for some contracts for he could be very helpful because you know we have uh you know light touch regime um uh contract not changed substantially in terms of the um the types of services that come under the LTR um so a lots of stuff to do with Education and Research Etc will already be you know will will still be covered by that um so that will take out a chunk of contracts for you although as I said earlier you know for best practice purposes it's probably good to be thinking about these things anyway um but there will be no obligation to report on them so let's start at the very beginning um so as I've mentioned already pipeline notices you could consider giving an indication of kpis for your big contracts um and you could give an indication to the market that you would like to discuss these as part of Market engagement before you start running the process formally um I think Market engagement is the perfect time to start introducing potential kpis to see how the market reacts to them I have over the years been involved with clients that have done this very thing and it has proved very useful to understand understand where the market sits obviously you don't have to be entirely led by the market you have to do what's right for your organization but it is so much better to have suppliers on board at the beginning before the bid before the procurement process formally starts to ensure that you are going to have a smooth a procurement and contract finalization process as possible so should your approach to planning um change under the act as opposed to what you do now well as as now there's no set format it depends on the nature and complexity of the contract and the pool of the suppliers that you have um is it more important under the ACT well I guess you could short answer yes I believe so um not only because of the kpis but also um because of the change to the procedures so the competitive flexible procedure which you will have a great amount of discre over what that procedure looks like um this will help you get the best out of it by testing with the market what you're going to do um hopefully it will reduce the need for inter modifications of the contract if you've talked through some of the potentially trickier issues um with with suppliers um and it really does allow you to sort of help um sort of uh crystallize how the procurement is going to assist you in achieving strategic objectives or key policy points if you are able to understand from a market perspective where they're going to be in in supporting you with that so at the tender stage um which procedure should you use um well we do only have two now so we have the open procedure and the competitive flexible procedure open procedure is pretty similar to what we have at the moment um and um in terms of these biger higher value contracts that you need to have your kpis in um it could still be very appropriate to have an open procedure because um it could be for pretty simple services or or it could be for a a contract where you believe that there are going to be a very small pool of bid and actually you don't feel the need to down select because even even though it's the open procedure there is there is still more flexibility than we currently have in terms of what you can do during the open procedure in terms of running it so if you think it's something that can be a paper based exercise and you don't need to down select biders because you're not going to have a huge number of them then um you may still use the open procedure um for a lot of contracts of five million and above it may be more appropriate to use the competitive flexible procedure which you know if you want to think about it in terms of the procedures that we currently have to try and give it some sort of like context and and kind of centering um your competitive flexible procedure could look like anything from from a standard restrictive procedure where you are using it mainly to down select because you think you might have a large number of biders all the way through to the most complex of competitive dialogues with multiple stages um you know successive um reductions in number of biders and everything in between um because you do have the flexibility to do that and that again is a whole other session in terms of what the competitive flexible procedure could look like um and and how you how you understand the framework within which it's all going to work um but in terms of the kpis obviously again they will be more um nuanced they might might be more complex um the more complex your procurement is and the more complex your contract is um and during your attender stage you can change the documents during the procurement there is a um a way to do that um and we will think about that a bit more in a second so um I've touched on some of this slide already um and so I'll cter through it pretty pretty quickly um as I said we've got the two the two procedures um probably something that is worth noting is that you know there is no default procedure anymore so default under the PCR is open or restricted you need a reason that's set out in regulation 26 of the PCR to to use the competitive dialogue or competitive procedure with negoti ation um you don't need a justification anymore um if you are setting up and running a dynamic Market which is the um uh new version of the of DPS um then you must use the competitive flexible um to do that um so a few more words on um competitive flexible procedure what we're saying calling cfp um as I talked about a sort of framework and a structure to how you do that um the big the word that comes out a lot in the procurement Act is proportionality or acting being proportionate and um so deciding how to design your process deciding what kpis you're going to use have to be proportionate to the nature complexity and cost of the contract um and I think you know when it comes to challenges under the new regime I suspect a lot of challenges we're going to see are about proportionality and testing that um which is interesting because that's not really something that is tested at the moment um very regularly I can think of a very small number of cases where that is the case um it is more Akin with challenges under things like judicial review so it'll be interesting to see maybe where there's more crossover between some of the case law there to look at what proportionality actually means um but I'm getting my procurement geek on here so I will I will stop and move on um so yeah there are very few detailed rules about how you run your procurement um so there are however in the procurement act principles and objectives um and as I said you know challenges are likely to be vased around um adherence to the principles which are not there's a whole section of the ACT called principles and objectives and then there are no principles set out in that part of the ACT so you have to take it that the principles are spread out throughout the whole act and are you know include things like proportionality um the EU freedoms are obviously no longer relevant so things like you know Freedom uh you know free movement of goods fre movement of persons which was actually although very rarely talked about in terms of the PCR are actually very fundamental to the initial original directives around um procurement um there is no equivalent to regulation 18 which is the you know equal treatment and transparency um but the ACT does mention proportionality an awful lot there is also reference to um the national procurement policy statement um which has already been published was published a little while ago um worth read if you've got a free couple of hours and you fancy um uh something stimulating um and then we also have objectives which are set out thank goodness um something is is pretty clear um must have regard to the importance of delivering value for money maximizing public benefits um sharing information for the purposes of allowing supplies and others to understand the procurement policies so really and acting with integrity and and really once you get into this you know sharing of information um acting with Integrity treating suppliers the same you know equal treatment and transparency actually are there they're just under a different phrase or term and in a you know maybe sort of approached in a slightly different way but um you know very much still thinking about how to treat all biders equally and make sure that all biders have the same information um I mentioned earlier about can you change your kpis during a procurement process and the answer is yes but um so it is much clearer in the procurement act that you are able to refine your tender documents but then you must republish your tender notice and the associated do ments um and I think the reason for this is that government what government is trying to sort of cut down on is procurements that kind of quite considerably change their scope over the over the over the the length of the tender process and of course the biders that are in that process are aware of that but there may be other people in the market who think oh gosh well if that had been the be if that had been the The Proposal at the outset then then that would have changed how I bid or I would have bid in a situation when I didn't and so it's about it's this transparency point it's about being very clear with the market as to what's going on um this can not happen once tenders have been submitted so obviously that would be incredibly unfair to all biders that have submitted a tender if then there were changes made but it can happen up to that point um the limitation on it is that um the refinement can't be such that it would have altered an earlier assessment and by that what it means is that um it wouldn't have changed the outcome of an earlier stage in the process so at the SQ stage or if you're in a multi-stage process and you're reducing the number of biders at each stage then um the change to the the refinement of the documents wouldn't have impacted on that um so for things like kpis you you could see a situation where during attender process it becomes apparent that a kpi has been drafted in a way that is now no longer fully meeting the requirements of the Authority or there is some change to um uh to another change in the contract that has a knock on impact on the kpi um so there is the ability to make those changes but you do have to always reflect on whether that would have impacted on how bid is how bid is acted at an earlier stage in the process so then we get on to awarding your contract now again you know there's there's a lack of detail in a that we currently have in the PCR um you know now at the moment we are told very clearly that um it's only competitive procedure with negotiation and competitive dialogue that have the ability to negotiate on the contract terms and it's only competitive dialogue that you have the ability to um you know refine and improve the offer of the bidder preferred bidder at preferred bidder stage um so we don't have that in the ACT um but you obviously still need to always think about um principles and objectives um you know treating all the biders the same so if we're thinking about kpis and you're negotiating those with your preferred bidder obviously query whether those new updated refined varied kpis would have made a difference to biders at an earlier stage um and I think one way to think about this as we do at the moment is to look at the test under regulation 72 of the PCR um which is an amended version of that is in the ACT is actually I feel slightly structured slightly better in terms of How It's set out in the ACT um but you can you can ask yourself the question like if we change the kpi in in this way would it be classed as a substantial modification under under the modification um Provisions um and that's a good way to test whether it would have impacted on the procurement at an earlier stage um and then also you know would the change to these kpis be seen as proportionate so you know that that fee of proportionality is maybe the other golden thread running through the procurement act so I think what we can't underestimate the importance of is um preparation and documentation so because we don't have process driven rules in quite the same way anymore both Contracting author and biders may not be sure about exactly what is going to happen as in there's no expectation from the act that you can think okay well this is a competitive dialog procedure or this is the restrict so I can expect x y and Zed as part of this process so Contracting authorities are going to have to be really really clear about documenting their proposed process and they're going to have to be really really clear as to where the flexibility lies in this so in terms of thinking about contract management at a later stage being very clear in the documents about what elements of the contract may be up for suggested amendments from biders negotiation with biders um is really a key part of that and as I've said before you know making the most of Market engagement so that everyone as much as possible is on the same page at the point of the procurement going live um because what we have to remember is that flexibility does doesn't mean making it up as you go along it means that you have flexibility process in the way that best fits your organization and the designing of that process then has to be articulated clearly in the tender documents um and any other information in contract notices Etc um so it's really really important to get all of that right so now we get on to um the last the last few slides but where we start having to think about what happens during the the life of the contract and contract performance notices so these are new because this whole reporting is new um and as I said before section 71 of the ACT requires this annual reporting against the relevant kpis we have the transparency regulations now in draft um and regulation 29 helpfully sets out what a contract performance notice has to include um and I guess this is something which is a variation a variance a difference to what we have at the moment under the PCR because at the moment while we have information in the PCR about for example what stand letters need to include um and we have standard template notices that must be used there isn't in the same way a list of all of the requirements of all of the notices in quite the same way that we have under these transparency regulations because they are quite a lengthy document actually um and you know it goes through all of the different notices that are may be required to be published from you know from everything from pipeline notices your Market engagement notices um all the way through to these contract performance and to um modification notices so in all there there are 40 notices and they're covered off in a relatively good amount of detail actually in the transparency regulations um so um there is a requirement to assess the performance against the kpis um and if there is a breach of public of of a public contract or a failure to perform that information must be shared in the appropriate format um at that 12mon Mark of the contract term um so I guess that that last point is just is just really to say that you know a the information is set out in the regulations B I don't think you need to assume you know you don't have to remember all of this information because I think we can assume that um we are going to have standard notices um that will be um you know accessed in the way that you access standard notices at the moment um and that those notices will be set up to capture all of this information but there is going to have to be a level of detail around some of it which um you will need to think about on a case-by Case basis but it was also probably be good to think about having some standard drafting for your um uh for your organizations um to so that you're not having to you know take too much time over over some of this especially when you have you know maybe similar contracts with similar kpis then trying to get to a point of having standard drafting is will probably be really helpful um so but why am I saying this because um you have to rate the performance of your contractor against the kpis that are published um there are five ratings that you can um that you can uh indicate um and they're set out there and they are helpfully set out in the regulations as well as part of Regulation 29 there is there is a table that sets these out I tried to cut and paste the table and then the formatting went horribly wrong so um I've just retyped them um but yeah but there is a helpful table in there that you know that might be a good thing for example to have in your um if you have a kind of contract management handbook for your organization or part of your contract standing orders to have that table in that document so that it's very very clear for everybody exactly what they're being asked to um to use as the way of rating the performance so we can see there that um you know good is meeting or exceeding approaching targets close to meeting I think requires Improvement and inadequate um and Poss you know those three in the middle approaching Target requires Improvement and inadequate is where you're going to get your challenges um with your contractors because you could take a very different interpretation of whether performance is close to below below or significantly below the kpis obviously your supplier is even if they recognize that they're not meeting all of their kpis they are going to want to be an approaching Target they're not going to be wanting to be requires Improvement or inadequate um and um and you've got other which performance can't be described as any of the above which is yeah very open to interpretation and um you know clearly meant for the the sort of the worst of the worst situations um but you basically have to be able to say in your contract performance notice which of these ratings has been met um and where there is not where performance of kpis is not being met so anything below good um you have to describe in the notice what the issue is and again I I do think this is going to create has the potential to create a lot of friction with suppliers who again will not want lots of detail to be published um they might be worried about it impacting other contracts they might be worried about it impacting financial performance so um if their Banks get a hold of this information um certainly if they are um uh a PLC um which you know some big suppliers are especially again thinking about both kind of it Tech stuff and construction you've got some big suppliers that are you know in the footsie and or an alternative market and you know they've got shareholders to answer to so obviously information about poor performance in contracts that is publicly available um comes with risk for them so that's in some ways a good stick and carrot to beat and dangle in front of them in terms of good performance um but I think that you will find that if things are published that they don't agree with they are going to very strongly refute that information and ask you to change it because um it has a negative impact on them so I guess um one you know one thing that you can think about is whether you have as part of your contract management within your contract a way of attempting to agree the the drafting of these contract performance notices with your supplier in advance of publishing them and I can see many many good reasons for for that in terms of um maintaining good relationships with your suppliers clearly at the end of the day you as the Contracting Authority have to have the last word um and you need to be comfortable that you are correctly reporting against contract um contract performance but I do think that there will have to be a bit of toing and throwing um possibly a bit of compromising in terms of the drafting but Bas but definitely having the ability to sort to build in that review and um discussion on the rating and what information is going to be shared I think will be really important to make contracts run smoothly um otherwise I can see an awful lot of contract disputes on the horizon that frankly nobody maybe with the ception of dispute lawyers um of which I'm not one um would want to happen um so it's yeah I think really important to think about all of that um one thing to note is that where the underperformance results in full termination of the contract then you don't have to publish a contract performance notice because you'll be publishing a contract termination notice instead which is another new notice under the um under the ACT but there are also some other consequences of poor performance that I just wanted to touch on towards the end of this session so I am less aware of this happening in in universities but certainly when I work with both Central and local government and you have elected members either local councilors or MPS um there is often a lot of pressure on offices to exclude bidding from a process because the elected member is aware of them performing badly under another contract or they are aware of um you know negative information in the Press they don't want their authority to be associated with that particular supplier it is really difficult to exclude for poor pass performance um under the PCR the the ACT widens this somewhat ens the scope because for the PCR to bite the contract the perform po performance has to have been bad enough to either terminate the contract or um result in a hefty damages remedy so a financial penalty whereas here we've got um situations where the supplier has failed to remedy a breach of the contract as being sufficient now schedule 7 of the ACT sets out all of the discretionary grounds for excluding a bidder and one and this discretionary ground um is in relation to poor p poor performance of a contract it can be current performance as well um it must be sufficiently serious and again you can see how that is going to be interpreted differently between a Contracting Authority wanting to penalize A supplier before performance and the supplier not wanting to be penalized in that way for poor performance so again I think this is going to be something that can could become very contentious um and so an authority Contracting Authority will still have to think really carefully about applying this test um and will'll have to use its judgment really on a case-by Case basis about how that is going to be um reflected in the market um different markets are are more litigious than others are more likely to push back on these things so it's going to require market knowledge to really kind of decide whether it's an appropriate thing to do or not um and alongside that you know the Contracting Authority must comply with the procurement objectives being fair and proportionate so really thinking very carefully about whether excluding a bidder is actually fair and proportionate in the circumstances um but obviously on the basis that publishing performance data makes poor performance more visible I think there is more opportunity for other Contracting authorities to make decisions about suppliers that they don't currently use and that's why I think suppliers are going to be so Keen to have a level of control over what is published about their performance in their performance uh contract performance notices so just before we we finish um just sort of some really practical thoughts on how you as universities and other Contracting authorities can be preparing for contract management and I think a lot of this is going to come down to having the right people with the right skills and the time to do this because I don't think we should ignore the fact that this is at all stages the procurement really adding in an additional requirement to um to the work of procurement offices and contract management teams um so really even though you know you don't have to publish a pipeline until at least April next year um no none of these procurements are going to start until 28th of October this year um you know why don't you start doing a gap analysis now um pretty soon to check that you do have the resources and the skill sets available to actively manage monitor contracts um you know another thing haven't put it on the slide but you know just thinking about how do your contract and procurement teams currently work together do you think that the people who draft your procurement documents understand well enough how your contracts are managed to be able to draft relevant narrative into procurement documents about kpis how they're going to be managed how the contract is going to be you know monitored generally Etc because that will all have to be shared with biders UPF front and center as part of the procurement process um do you think that your um contract management teams and your um your legal teams or your your contract teams that that help with the drafting of contracts um area are able to draft effective kpis have they had training on what is a good kpi um you know how to how to sort of practically test whether kpis are going to work or not um does all of your team have effective contract management skills to be able to um take on data from the supplier to evaluate that data and make an assessment based on those um five um performance uh ratings that that were on a previous slide you know how are you going to make sure that everyone has got that requisite skill set um really helpfully I think will be to review your contracts that are in pipeline now um so for you know probably mainly for your you know new new Academic Year starting in August um think about which of those contracts are going to be um published after the 28th of October 2024 so that you can be thinking about which contracts are going to need that little bit extra attention um in the first six months or so so that everyone can can get um you know can get to grips with it all um and you know one way I guess to really help you think about what kpis might look like in the future how to draft them is to look at kpis in your existing contracts now you know are they as good as they could be could could they be better um have they actually helped to address Performance issues or are the things that you would on reflection change so hopefully that has all been helpful um I realize you know there is there is a lot to take in something that really is covered off in just a few sections of the ACT actually once you start unpacking it um really does link to a lot of other sections so you know contract management is not just reviewing your kpis once you've got a contract and monitoring them and Publishing a notice it really should start way way way before that at the beginning of a procurement exercise um and flow all the way through um but I think that's that's all that we have time for today hopefully that has been that has been use full but um yeah I'm always happy to to talk more about these things um over the coming months as well as we get closer to um closer to the 28th of October but for now I'm going to stop sharing those slides and hand back to Helen thank you very much Anna um it's a very insightful and interesting session and I'm sure all of our members enjoyed the information you've provided today um we've got lots of great questions so as I mentioned earlier your questions have been collated they will be shared with Ana and then your Consortium will share the responses with the slide deck very soon um so the next webinar in the series will be the new notices regime and the procurement act on the 14th of May so look out for information coming soon from your Consortium to book on to that session and once again thank you to Anna thanks to you all for attending today that brings the session to a close so have a lovely day everyone thank you die thanks bye