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RESOLVED to:
 
1. 
Approves the award of? the Asset Management Delivery
Construction Contractors Framework Agreement to support the
delivery of the Council’s Asset Management Delivery Capital
programme ?to the following bidders:?-
 
Lot 1 -
Mechanical  - Bidders A, B,
C?, D
 
Lot 2 -
Electrical  - Bidders L, A, B?,
M
 
Lot 3 -
Fabric 
- Bidders A, R, E?, I
 
2. 
Noted that officers will be liaising with the
Procurement team following the meeting to clarify how the
discretion will be used and its limits in relation to third
paragraph at section 9.3 of the submitted report and an update to
be provided to the Committee.
 
Reasons For Decision
 
This report seeks approval for the award of a
Construction Contractors Framework Agreement to support the
Council’s Capital program.
 
The formation of a contractor’s
framework offers the Council a rapid, easily accessible, highly
cost-effective route to appointing vetted contractors.
 
The framework will mostly consist of small and
medium-sized enterprises (SME) that can be regularly used by LBH
AMD if and when required.  Although
there are many Nationwide Contractors Frameworks, they very rarely
have the smaller suppliers on their lists.  Our experience in using such frameworks has shown
us that larger organisations do not always fit our profile for
works to be carried out quickly.
 
Alternative Options
Considered and Rejected
 
Option 1: Insource
all or part of the works required
 
Resources required for specialised skills and
expertise are not available in-house nor generally employed
directly by the Council as these works are required on an ad hoc
basis on Capital projects depending on the nature of the works
being carried out.
 
The lack of staff and operational
accommodation associated with insourcing all the work activities
included in the AMD contracts does not make this option viable and
was therefore rejected at this time. 
 
Insourcing could be advantageous to LBH and
something that has been progressed in ways previously noted such as
the investment in the internal client team.
 
Option 2 –
Utilising existing contractors’ frameworks
 
This is not the preferred route in order to
meet the requirements. Our projects often require specialist
expertise and have very narrow timeframes, and we need contractors
whose values and a way of working are aligned with the
council’s.  At present the model
that we are working with is not effective to the nature of the
works that we are carrying out. 
Currently too much time is being spent on tendering works with
various numbers of contractors. We would like to offer more support
to the smaller SME’s and by procuring our own framework we
can extend our pool of suppliers by inviting the smaller and medium
companies that are not on the existing frameworks to
participate.
 
Option 3 - To
procure contractors via conventional tender routes
 
These routes are time consuming and require
more resources from the department. The nature of the
department’s work is often urgent and requires using the most
efficient way to procure the contractors. The use of one-off
procurement exercises would lead to a wide variety of contractors
making contract management more complex.  It would also give rise to a wide variety of
prices for similar work, due to different tendering
times.  This offers poor cost certainty
and may cause challenges from leaseholder groups.  One-off procurement exercises will only be used
for unusual items of specialist work which fall outside of the
longer contractual arrangements term