The 1998 ‘Egan’ report, ‘Rethinking Construction’, the 2000 Best Value regime and the Government’s Public Sector Efficiency Reviews set many challenges. Among them is to maximise expenditure on front line services by achieving cost efficiencies in procurement processes, whilst also producing better quality products. Those who met these challenges by adopting new and more efficient ways of working secured overall capital cost improvements that exceeded 8%.

In 2004, Ken Odgers from CAL produced a suite of documents for the Local Government Task Force within Constructing Excellence, to help local authorities rise to this challenge. The suite consisted of four documents that describe how local authorities could achieve the full benefits of this new way of working, and hard copies were distributed free by CAL to all local authorities in England and Wales.

The full suite of documents is available by clicking on the icons below:

This contains a foreword by Tim Byles, (then Chair of the Local Government Task Force [LGTF]), and an Introduction by Mike Foy (then Assistant Chief Executive of St Helens MBC, Working Group Chair and LGTF Board Member).

In the wake of the National Procurement Strategy and the corresponding Public Sector Efficiency Review, it explains why an update was felt necessary to the Implementation Guide that had been distributed in 2001. It provides a short summary of what 'Constructing Excellence' and 'Rethinking Construction' are, what and who the pack is for, and descriptions of the contents of the other documents in the suite.

Focuses on the structures that must be in place to facilitate implementation at operational level. Such issues are:

1. Procurement structure enables strategic consideration;

2. Involving those who can contribute to the success of a project from the earliest possible stage;

3. Develop a 'Respect for People' culture;

4. Focus throughout on desired outcomes; and

5. Establish a strategy for each project.

This concerns the following operational issues:

1. Appoint members of the team using a quality based selection process;

2. Consider whole-life procurement;

3. Share risks and rewards with all members of the team and provide them with incentives;

4. Encourage and use new technology where it has been demonstrated to be of potential benefit; and

5. Learn from the experience.

Contains supplementary guidance, to be read in conjunction with the above documents, and includes some example documents, such as:

Ten golden rules for establishing a partnering agreement;

Example skills / training matrix;

Business case template;

Role of the Project Sponsor;

Illustrative reward strategy; and

Illustrative quality/price assessment and recording methodology.