The Red Review - Social Value in the New Procurement Act world
With the new UK procurement act going live, accompanied by its new policy statement and it's new updated intent on social value - in this webinar, Jeremy talks to social value expert Carrie-Ann Huelin about the new environment for SV, including what ‘PPN 002: Taking account of social value in the award of contracts’ means for us in the world of winning work.
Find Carrie-Ann on LinkedIn - Carrie-Ann Huelin
Transcript
[0:00:00] Jeremy: Welcome to the red review with me. Jeremy brim, the red review is brought to you by growth ignition, the transformation and capability development business all in the work winning space and the bid toolkit, its product set in bid process and training videos.
[0:00:16] Jeremy: Welcome everybody.
[0:00:18] Jeremy: So I'm Jeremy brim. I lead a business called growth ignition, where consultants, transformation, consultants and training people all in the work winning space. So whether it's figuring out how to approach market research and business planning, how to conduct Account Based Marketing for B to B, B to G, businesses quite different to B to C, or particularly, whether it's key account, management of your key accounts, capture of your key pursuits, or writing winning bids. We help you figure out how to do that. What your processing and performance environment needs to look like, roles and responsibilities, but But particularly, we train people in all of that stuff through the through the funnel, the
[0:01:04] Jeremy: business has been going just over six years, and we've been having a great time working with many of the main building contractors where Carrie-Ann and I met. But also work with outsourcers, it businesses, lawyers, professional services, all sorts. And so we do share, or we've begun to share more and more free content. So these webinars are free. This will be distributed through our red review podcast channel, both in video form on YouTube and in audio form. You guys will all get a link to the recording of this. So hello. If you're joining us on the recording later. But we also provide a whole bunch of free content. We do weekly blog posts. We have the biggest podcast in the world in this stuff, because there aren't any others. All the red review with me, where we interview vendors and different experts, etc, in the bidding and capture space in particular, and then we provide some free training, bite sized training stuff, our big writing basics program and things like that. There, you'll get an email after this with a link to the recording and various bits and pieces that you're very welcome to access. So the new Procurement Act has happened. I've been exchanging WhatsApp messages with my expert friends, Gemma Waring, who we've done one of these webinars with, about how it's going, and it all seems to be going all right. You know, some things aren't particularly changing. Some things have changed a bit, but nothing earth shattering and nothing's falling over but reviewing the policy content that came out just days before, the week before the act was due to go live on Monday this week, I did take notes that there was a great deal of action around social value, and I'm not sure whether I should have seen that coming. As I was talking to Carrie-Ann, off camera, a couple of you got a little bit of a podcast of Carrie-Ann and I talking about moving house and stuff. I moved house on Friday, so last week was a bit frenetic, but certainly I was surprised by a couple of things in the policy statement, but particularly how much reference there was to social value, and indeed, new policy notices on social value. So as I don't know enough about this stuff to be able to talk about it for more than four minutes, I thought I'd better phone up one of my mates who really knows what they're talking about. We like to get real experts, real practitioners, not bid writers trying to be good at something, and ask the real questions and understand the real position. So welcome, Carrie-Ann,
[0:03:45] Carrie-Ann Huelin: Thanks. Jeremy, yeah, that was good.
[0:03:48] Jeremy: So just tell us a little bit about yourself, where you come from, what you do, and then we'll get into it, if that's all right.
[0:03:54] Carrie-Ann Huelin: Cool. Yeah. So I'm Carrie-Ann Huelin. I'm a social value consultant, and have my own consultancy, have had that running for eight years now and previously, and worked for tier one contractors, kind of in house for the enemy, doing it directly for those bigger organizations that delivery level earlier in my career, all the way up to kind of leading social value function a bit later in my career, a good, good 15 years after I first started. But I've also meddled and worked client side too, so been in the shoes of public sector organizations and a lot of procurement related activity, because social value has been embedded in procurement for a long time now. So writing social value questions, scoring social value questions. So I've seen that that guy, that person, scoring your answers when you submit bids and things like that as well. So kind of have this like quite well, round. This holistic view to social value, but also understand that it is changing, and the political and economic climate of the world changes. This stuff on a regular basis, and those practitioners have to pivot to that. Have to use our experience try and understand that in a particular way, and then help everybody else get to grips with this stuff. And I don't like to complicate the subject matter. I'm quite straight talking, and keep things as simple as possible. So you will probably pick up on that once again, to today's presentation, I will be honest if I don't know the answers to some questions, because yes, I've been in this world for 18 years where I certainly don't know everything, and I still learn the new daily, weekly. So that's just a little bit about me. Just to give you a bit of insight into the perspective and the kind of lens that I'm coming from with the experience I've had nearly two decades now, which is scary. Makes me feel very old,
[0:06:05] Jeremy: very good. Well, thank you for coming along, Carrie-Ann and making the time. I've always valued that you understood this very special world of social value, but also the bidding aspect how we answer these questions and do a good job with our solutions for communities is quite a rare balance. Actually, you get many social value practitioners who are quite scared of bidding people when they're asked to write stuff for bids and things. But it's obviously becoming, well, as we'll talk about, I'm sure it's becoming a big, bigger and bigger scoring factor in public sector bidding. You know, it's moving towards a much bigger percentage of the marks and so. But let's, let's get into it. You've got some, yeah, I have got, as I said, I'm very happy to pick up questions in the chat or Q and A go. Knowing me, I've probably not set it up right so someone doesn't see
[0:06:58] Carrie-Ann Huelin: your chat. Little number one already. So something that something's in there, I'm not clicking on anything, because I'm scared of what goes on the screen, if I do so, but I can see there's something in the chat already, maybe from somebody. So that's working.
[0:07:12] Jeremy: If those don't work, send me an email. But yeah, we'll get
[0:07:17] Carrie-Ann Huelin: so yeah. Just wanted to say a little bit about this, this bidding challenge before I dive into these specific acts and social volume model slides, but I've talked to a lot of people in the last couple of weeks about the difference between social value delivery and bidding, and the fact that it is catastrophically different skill set and task for People that are practitioners in social value, and a Coronavirus that I kind of use is and it works for people that drive a car. So if you've passed a driving test quite a number of years ago, the big world of social value is like having you drive and come up with your own style and your own knowledge of the road and other road users, and to get your teeth into that over a long period of time, and then say, Hey, we've got, we've got this challenge for you who wants to pass your driving test again. And I think for most of us, if someone said to us we had to pass our driving test now after driving for a long time, that would be pretty awful, and we wouldn't be used to the clinical, sterile process driven like slightly unpleasant environment that the driving test happened in. So when we say that that social volume, bidding and delivery are two different things, it's like having an experienced driver on the road in one circumstance and someone who's passing a test in the other when they're writing a bid. And that's why it feels weird. That's why it's challenging for people to be able to flick between those two types of thinking and stuff like that. You can do it, but you've got to go learn how to do that. Train yourself to go back to the basics and the clinical stereo world to do your video and then go back into your knowledgeable, kind of more
[0:08:48] Carrie-Ann Huelin: holistic approach with delivery. So that's just a little bit something I've been talking to people about in the last couple of weeks. I thought I just let you know what I've been saying. So why may have we had a lot of documentation out and a lot of things thrown at us with social value. Know that the new Procurement Act is live, and you know, for someone that's been around this stuff for a long time, it's kind of lovely that social value is still at the heart of this new piece of legislation and all this guidance that we have now to work to and especially given the global climate with some of the stuff that we've got going on, so I feel kind of proud of us that we're still keeping this at the center of what we do, and we're not afraid of keeping that alive through some of the political turmoil that was being helped were so I think we should all feel really. Please with ourselves that we're having these conversations and feel inspired to keep the flame alive as we go through some of the other challenges. And so I want to just try and demystify and talk a little bit about what's been published, what it means things to look out for, and to just prompt some conversation and some thoughts in the audience around this, this new model and what the procurement policy statement is saying about social value, so we don't feel too terrible when these new bid questions land and we're having to deliver about against some of these new structures that we've been given. So I want to talk about some of the basics. I just want to give you like five key things about some of the documents that have come out lately. You will have to read them. Some of them are quite short and sweet actually, and they sound scarier than they are when you actually open them. They're only a few pages long. They can make your way through that. And some are a little bit longer and a bit more complicated, but you will need to get your reading cap on to do some bedtime reading with some of these documents, I want to talk about some stuff that, in my view, is a little bit better now that we've had these new documents released to us, and we've changed a few things. Some stuff is a little bit more tricky now because of the changes that they've they've made for us with some stuff we're going to have to have on our radar, and maybe some stuff that's going to make us have to change some data capture and some processes or policies that we have to be ready to tackle some of these questions and a few little hints and tips on what to do to get ready. This is really hard for me to do, because I have loads of ideas to help people on how to tackle some of these new challenges we've got and how we can put things in place to meet the requirements and the sub criteria of the new model and but I don't have loads of time. I want to talk to you for like, maybe 20 minutes after and then I will answer the questions and have a chat to you as well. So I've had to rein it in a little bit. But if anybody wants to speak to me after this about any more ideas on any of it, you can just drop me an email, because you've got my contact details. So let's get into it, right? So there's a few documents floating around. This is the act. So this is the Procurement Act itself, the actual piece of legislation that's on a slightly different website. I think what I can do is just thinking about it when I get these slides to be able to be sent out to people, maybe just put a little reference slide at the end with some of the right links in for you as well. So you know you're looking at the right thing because the act is on a different website. So they're good. Don't you care? Website? And so some of the, some of the key things to pay attention to in the new Act, it's, there's a lot to read and ought to absorb in it, but we're going from meet to Matt. God, do I hate these acronyms. They're horrid. They're horrid. I don't like them at all. But we're going from scoring the most economically advantageous tender well to the most advantageous tender well. The difference between me and Matt is that it allows the client, the public sector body, to take into consideration all the social value and sustainability elements to see that as advantageous, even if they couldn't economically justify that previously. So this is this is really fab. This is really good for us. There's a wiggle word in there, though, how annoying. Some of the wording in there says contracting authority may award the contract to the supplier with the most advantageous tender. So does that mean they might not? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. So let's, let's just pay attention to the fact that we're all on the assumption that this means we're going to move to be able to recognize that social value and sustainability element. But will some clients maybe see that wiggle word is a way out of that? Not sure that might be something we need to take up with some clients as we get into this. And a big, big, big, big, big focus of the new Act is to increase spend with SMEs, small to medium enterprises and vcses, which are voluntary community and social enterprises and mutuals, which is another type of organization. Essentially, it's about diversifying spend and at the level of the Act document, this is a call to action for those public sector bodies to do that. So this hasn't quite yet got to us. As as contractors or consultants and things like that. This is the this is the call to action that central government are going to have to meet the they need to remove or reduce barriers for SMEs or other third sector social businesses, those kind of organizations, to be able to tender for this work. It's interesting that the user terminology remove or reduce so it's not about taking it away. It might be about making some tweaks to how people can access those opportunities. Again, just some interesting wording, but it's a very big focus. Starts off here in the act of the central government call to action, and it it trickles down into the policy statement and into the social value model too. So it starts off with them, but it ends up so watch this space on that. I'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. And the Act applies to most contracts where there are definitely some Ministry of Defense exemptions and some other exemptions as well. So pay attention to that. The wording around those exemptions is a little bit weird. So I think you're asking questions to to ask around exactly when and where they apply. And there's also a question around, well, if it doesn't apply, what? What are they going to do? Because before, the Ministry of events have asked questions around social value, and they have volunteered to use model the PPN do a 620 model that was applied previously. So interesting to see whether it means the Ministry of Defense just aren't interested in social value, or whether they're going to have something else that's specific to them.
[0:16:40] Carrie-Ann Huelin: It sets objectives around value for money, maximize public benefit and integrity. So there's some stuff around practical objectives and like more intangible objectives, in terms of how are they going to how a public body is going to prove that they've been acting with integrity? So that's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. And the framework implications are a little unclear in terms of how they act. And then the subsequent documents I'm going to talk to you about actually apply at some framework levels, because we all know that when we procure a framework that's one layer, and then underneath that framework, there are call offs and call off clients that have their own view and their own requirements they need to meet. So exactly how this manifests in a complex framework. Situation still needs some clients to provide some clarity on us for that, and it might mean we have to ask more questions and more TqS when we get tenders to make sure we are comfortable with that information before we dive deeply into answering big questions. So the statement, and this is separate, separate document. This is on the gov.uk website. The statement is bringing the act to life, and he's talking about the vision and mission that we want to have achieved by enacting what the Act says we should it's a little bit more qualitative in what it's talking about in the statement, and it puts these missions on The table for us to pay attention to. So economic growth is one of these missions that the statement says we need to focus on, again, reiterating the SME and bcfe spend. And if there's a section in the statement or in the social volume model that doesn't talk about high quality jobs. I'm yet to see it. This term is everywhere in these documents, and it's undefined what, what is a high quality job? It's
[0:18:53] Jeremy: also sorry to insert, but it's also interesting that in the act itself, it says that SMEs are barred from being able to take contracting authorities to the high court to challenge decisions based on being discriminated against for being SMEs. So it's got loads of stuff about SMEs in good and all that
[0:19:35] Carrie-Ann Huelin: was fun. Yeah, it's fun because the levels so I don't want to be too controversial about my grumpiness with some of this, but the level of space that there seems to be, that that the central government and public body departments have all this down by everything they need to do to follow all the intricate process they've been given to empower the. SMEs and VCS. The reason that clause is there, I think, is because there's the assumption that the process for the procurement was pretty flawless and was following all these new rules and reality of the of the last act we were working on decisions. No quite gonna happen that way. So it's a bit of like misdirected faith, I think that we're going to have to unpack in real life, as opposed to on paper, which is how they're looking at it currently. So yeah, thank you, Jeremy, for kind of highlighting that we do, even though it is very honorable. A lot of this stuff, we're going to have challenges to make it happen. There's a lot of focus on kind of like the wages and things like that. So that's where economic growth is looking. There is a theme in there about taking back the street so reducing crime by your community cohesion and jobs are hard to reach or underrepresented groups. So this is a bit unusual for us, because in the statement it's there, it's a little bit wooly, and it's a little bit hard, it's a bit tenuous. Let's just say, in terms of the thing, they've said, he's gonna, he's gonna end up with us having taken back our streets, but when we get into the reducing crime element of the social volume model that is focused, in its entirety, on tackling domestic abuse, so I'll get to that in a couple of slides. But the fact that in the policy statement, it's about community cohesion and jobs and employment skills and things. And then in the model, it diverted slightly into into something else. So I'm not quite sure how they're going to match up. So breaking down barriers is another thing they want to do, which we saw in terms of, you know, kind of making things accessible for these SMEs and vcses, but this is about addressing skills gaps and, again, connecting to this underrepresented part of the community to have them access opportunities. It's quite repetitive stuff. They're using the same terms over and over again. So when those things have been achieved in social value, how are they going to know which of these missions it's actually supporting when they get the published data of performance? That's another question. And there's a, there's a theme on, on, I think, to bring it, bringing on the NHS, to kind of be the NHS of the future, and they see that happening by supporting good physical and mental health via high quality jobs and recruiting from underrepresented groups. Super tenuous, like super, super tenuous. How do we weight those outcomes to proving that the NHS is future proofed. It seems like someone stuck in the policy statement last minute without really thinking it through. It's super tenuous and super repetitive, so something for us to watch out doesn't bite us as we're doing the social value delivery that we think it's meeting a particular part of this mission and vision, but it means another one. They've got a statement in there that says suppliers that benefit from taxpayers money are expected to deliver additional benefits. So that is something to pay attention to, that that is that is a mantra that they're working to, and that's why all this documentation is out and falling to us to pay attention to. So there is, there is something we are expected to do on that front. So BPN 002, is one document and the model is another, but it goes together. We work hand in hand, and few key bits of information about these so the model is available now to use, if anybody still wishes, in central government, but it's mandated from October. So any procurement that happens from the first of October onwards, this has to be how they ask the social value requirements, the model question is in there like before, and it's similar to the model question we had previously. There's a couple of little tweaks, and there's a couple of bits of simplification. It still has some repetitive elements to it, but it is there's, there's, like, a, maybe a 5% improvement to it. So let's take that, because it could have got worse. Let's just remember it could have got worse in the model. And there are eight outcomes this time and but roughly 101 sub criteria to those eight. It opens on about 31 KPIs. It depends how you measure that, because there's a lot of sub bullet points in this document. When you have a look at it, it's really long as what sub criteria towards things you want to do. So I counted every single thing on there when I tried to take the main one, to give you an understanding of scale of it. It felt a little bit scary when I said that, but I did make a note of what we had in the last model. That was five themes, 24 model assessment criteria, Max, 121 sub criteria, and 45 KPIs. So we've got more outcomes or themes, and we've got less sub criteria and less KPIs. So in technically, that should make this a little bit more palatable, but if you have a look at it, I'm not sure if you'll feel that way, because it's still really complicated. There's a lot of stuff we need to be 10% waiting on social value, which is the same as before. And anything that you commit will be made either a contractual call, a KPI or a performance indicator, a pi. So it's gonna it's gonna go written down somewhere, let's just say and, and the weighting of that for you will depend on how it might fit. Clients are required to choose one relevant outcome when they're doing their procurement, unless it's one of the government's most important contracts, which is undefined. We don't know what they are at this point. So it's not been made explicit, what would count the value or scale in terms of being a most important contract. But I'm telling you this because if you get a bid that is relatively middle ground, and it's got the whole model in it because the procurement professional hasn't read what they're supposed to do, then you need to go back and challenge that, because they are supposed to choose one, maybe two, if they're trying to stretch boundaries here, but that's the guidance. And so I think what happened last time with the model is that procurement professionals were just putting the whole model into the bid and asking you to respond to everything, or pick your own pick your own things that you think are relevant. That's not our job to do. That's their job to do, and that's what the guidance says. So that's why I put that in here, to remind us we might need to do some challenging also when we put some commitments together in our bid world, the vault, this time, the volume of your offers, in the number of people and number of hours, whatever it might be they'll be asked for. So you should be doing that as best practice on log contracts and frameworks might be a bit different and a bit trickier, but they will not be part of the evaluation, and the guidance specifically says that. So it's not about someone's offered 10 apprentices, someone's offered 20 it's about the methodology and detail that you that you're putting forward that gets evaluated. So that's something else to remember that's a really big deal. Carrie-Ann, yeah, I know, first I've heard about Yeah. So that's, that's what it says in the in the documentation, so
[0:28:37] Jeremy: or so somebody, just at the same time, somebody has asked the question, if there's a minimum weighting of 10% for social value, is there an upper weighting limit? Is it between 10 and 20 or as big as they like?
[0:28:49] Carrie-Ann Huelin: It's as much as they want, but they have to business case it. They have to justify why they want it to be more, why they feel for the contract. It's relevant and and they also have to justify whether it's overall 10% or whether it's 10% of quality, depending on the type of contract that they're working to and things like that. So it could be 10% on its own and then 60 quality, and whatever less is less for cost, or it could be 10% of 70% quality.
[0:29:24] Jeremy: That's really interesting. So again, because the mood music I've been picking up over the last couple of years was that the direction of travel was, it was going to be a 20%
[0:29:32] Carrie-Ann Huelin: minimum and 20 score, yeah, it was. I think there was ambition, because they saw that it worked. The increased percentages worked in some circumstances, but I don't know. I think they're not confident enough about processing procedures to justify it having that weighting,
[0:29:59] Carrie-Ann Huelin: because the level of challenge might be more not sure.
[0:30:28] Jeremy: Well, I mean, that's. It's a really interesting leading, isn't it? Because, away from being a maths thing, which arguably, you could argue either way was right or wrong, you know, we'll give you 10 apprentices versus, you know, a competitor's eight, and therefore we should get 10 marks, and they should get eight or Yeah, work. So I can, I can understand the pros and cons of either side of that, but now it's going to be subjective about your method,
[0:30:28] Carrie-Ann Huelin: yeah, but it's going to be a qualitative assessment, which is a little bit like read qualitative as compliance with the award criteria sub criteria and the offer of the KPI. So they they've listed out some very ambitious award criteria and sub criterias with very detailed sub lists of the nuance of what they want. And so when you write your methodology, if you're not aligned to that, and I mean, you going off beast from that, then that is where you'll come unstuck, I think, in terms of not being seen to meet the qualitative requirements. Wow.
[0:31:16] Jeremy: Okay, so this, this is good for bidding people, in some ways, in the US bid writing professionals, that's our game, really is making sure that we're compliant as a base principle what the client's asking for. So should we all should be very good at that, and should be competitors who don't take it seriously from that standpoint. But it's signing up to governance piece
[0:31:41] Carrie-Ann Huelin: is quite interesting. It is. And I'll just digress just for like two minutes on something that I was going to add in that when we read kind of qualitative scoring as compliance with the award criteria and sub criteria, we have to look at the doing words that they've used in that massive sub criteria list, and I'll read some of them out to you that will show you the difference in how you're going to write, how you're going to do that. So some of the doing words are the things they want you to be able to write about. Show that you're doing so, delivering activities, providing things, ensuring things, offering things, monitoring, measuring, understanding, influencing, supporting, mapping, demonstrating, outlining, structuring and creating. So there are all the different there's more. There's some of the doing words that are in that list. So how you articulate that you've created something is very different. To how you articulate that you're ensuring something is different, again, to how you're influencing something, you're going to have to prove that you've done those doing words. So
[0:32:58] Jeremy: just for starters, insuring is a contractual legal term.
[0:33:03] Carrie-Ann Huelin: Yeah, a lot of businesses won't sign up to that. Yeah, so if we look at what the sub criteria is saying though that we're going to be qualitatively scored on that, and then we're going to have to be very good at articulating ourselves in terms of those commitments that we make
[0:33:24] Jeremy: busy. So sorry. Just because it's on this it's quite important for these guys from reflection so So fundamentally, just to confirm carry on if one company offers six apprentices and another one offers one but they have the same methodology, and used to basically say the same thing,
[0:33:46] Carrie-Ann Huelin: they'll get the same score. Yes, that's what the guy that's what the guidance says that volume use of offers are not evaluated. Is very specific. It's there's no wiggle words in that. And if anybody want, like, you can ask after, I'll find this. I'll find the document and the bit in the document that it says in, or you as well, because I know there's not a lot to look through so I know where it is and I can, I can maybe just put a little link or reference into the slide before again and sent out to you so you can see it, please. Yeah,
[0:34:22] Jeremy: that's really quite interesting. Thank you. Okay, we'll come back to the other points in a bit.
[0:34:26] Carrie-Ann Huelin: Okay, cool. So just put this together, see. So when I was talking all those numbers, and you're like, What? What you talking about? How many of these? And I just wanted to map it out. It's just a simple little word table that I just did for myself so I can understand what what. And it's interesting to look at, though, because the outcomes start off super simple, and then they end up like really worthy and convoluted towards the end. And the more worthy and convoluted outcomes are, the harder they are to measure. One. To improve that you're doing what what you said, because, like outcomes, or whatever themes, or whatever you want to call them, is should be simple, because you should be tracking one type of activity. And so I thought it was really interesting to see the journey of these outcomes as they go through the new model, and the fact that number one, number three and number six are scarier than others. So if we are preparing ourselves to be able to answer questions on this that come through, we need to be ready to be asked what is in these that said some of the ones that look a little bit more friendly, like number five, which just has one award criteria and two sub criteria of one KPIs, that if you ask you, that they might be asking You more than one thing, because they might think it's not enough, but also the data that you need to back up that, and maybe the change in process in your organization, or new policies and things like that, would mean these might look at face value as simpler, But would require a lot of process change within your organization, and discussion and workshopping decisions all the way up to board level with HR or it or others around what are we going to do? Because, like I said in the model, scene five is about tackling domestic violence, and if you haven't got much in place on that, and you get asked about that, you're going to have to be ready to have an ability to demonstrate that you're doing it. So it looks friendly on the table, but maybe in real life isn't going to be super friendly for you to prove and deliver against if you're not ready for it. So be worried of taking some of this at face value as well. So some stuff that's a bit better. So our old model on one side and in one on the other, and we were asked for multiple outcomes and themes previously, one because our procurement people do the client side procurement. People didn't read the guidance. They put the whole model in and asked us to do everything, and we didn't want to upset anybody by challenging it. And likely we should be getting one or two out of us in this procurement, because it's very explicit in the guidance, the quantity of your offer could be evaluated before, and now it's not. Volumes are expected to be offered, but not evaluated. Big, big tips. Another significant change is that before it was all about full time equivalent. So this term came about for various reasons. It's some ons stats. It's in some other things. It's in the national Toms framework, stuff like that. So that was about looking at your workforce and having to do maths and calculations on what does this number of humans mean in terms of full time jobs? Because not everybody is full time on a project. Quite a lot of people aren't. Probably more people aren't than are, especially when it comes to like your your overhead staff and stuff like that. So now we're asked for roles. So different roles, not full time equivalent, for some of the outcome, some of the sub criteria, that's definitely going to get gamed. Yes, it's but it got games before. It got games before. So to stick to what isn't it, but it's just a different term. So you know, having to, you do your histogram for your workforce, and before, you have to do math on it to say the number, and then you do have to do maths on it, because it's that they're the roles,
[0:39:05] Jeremy: but 1000 people on it for 20 minutes each.
[0:39:09] Carrie-Ann Huelin: Yeah, saying that they're not measuring the quantity, they're not measuring the not measuring the quantity. So that I don't know whether someone is just trying to get away from that national Tom measure. Don't know, don't know why they've done it. I've no intel on that so, but I just wanted people to know about it. And the model question before was quite confusing and really repetitive, and now it's just a bit confusing and a bit less repetitive, but it's certainly not big. It's still a convolute
[0:39:59] Carrie-Ann Huelin: ed question is still asked for very similar things at different parts of the question that look like you have to repeat yourself. So don't really need to get to grips with it and look at it, but it, you know, we've got probably a 5% improvement. So, you know, let's take that, because it could have been worse and there's no COVID thing. Mean, so Hurrah. Because we, you know, up until six months ago, people were still being asked to respond to the COVID thing in the last model, because procurement people weren't paying attention to what they were asking for. So Hurrah. So COVID said, gone. And before, there were really detailed cyber essentials requirements for supply chain. So KPIs on this, things we have to put into place to demonstrate that our supply chain has undertaken certain levels of cyber essentials, training and upskilling. And there's nothing in this. It's gone. So something else, it's it's still there because there's a procurement policy note on it, so it's still in the world of of the act, but it's not in our social value bit. It's somewhere else stuff that's going to be a bit trickier, so gonna have to capture a load of diversity data, which everybody hates, and we're all talking about GDPR and everything else that goes, goes with that and the challenges. But it's the it's in the KPIs. I've done a little arrow for the italics at the top, and it's just some examples of what I mean. So some of the KPIs are defined by age, so you have to say how many people who are over 16 are paid something or given a contract of a certain type, how many people who are 18 to 20, and how many people are 20 plus? So you've got some age boundaries. You've got to be able to talk about your spend with startups, SMEs, BCS and mutual so if you don't know what your supply chain makeup is and what the categorization of the businesses you're procuring from are, then you're gonna be able to meet that KPI and you're gonna have a problem. So you're gonna have to change your data capture, and you're gonna have to be able to talk about underrepresented people as a proportion of the workforce and receiving opportunities, and that might have been defined by the client, or you might have to define it. It's a bit wooly currently, but you're still going to have to have a way of talking about that, and usually the badging that over as people with protected characteristics, so people's age, gender, race, ethnicity, disability status, things like that. So each, I think, for a lot of businesses, because you're probably on a journey with diversity data, but it is epic in terms of what they're asking for in here, another new thing that's a bit trickier. Outcome, five is completely focused on tackling domestic abuse and supporting victims and survivors. So it's going to be scary new to other people that don't have anything in place for this. The Home Office did ask this question out in the ether a little while ago. So it's been meddling with this a little bit in some squirrels procurements that that happened. But for more people, it's going to be brand new. And there's a, there's a there was a big focus before modern slavery. It's even more detailed now in the KPIs are a bit different too, so the modern slavery kind of element hasn't gone anywhere, and it's got a bit more intense with data tracking, general corporate policies, slash the activities within them won't count in your social value. So if you try and give them a generic statement about what you do as a business and don't contextualize it or make it specific to that contract, then they will disregard it. So be wary of that. It can be used to complement your methodology, to talk about that you have it, and you can say we're going to mirror what we did to launch that policy behaviorally on this project, when workshops are last, you can use it in your narrative, where you can't say that's what you're getting because they don't see it. Additional commitments must be on run above the goods and services in the contract, so this will apply to some and not others, but if you were going to provide employability, government services, employability as an offer isn't going to count because you've been paid to do that. So be wary of that. And specifically, jobs must be advertised via the Job Center, find a job website, and subcontract on contract finder, and you'll be that'll be in your contract to do that and prove you've done that,
[0:44:49] Jeremy: that last bit subcontract speed is that new?
[0:44:53] Carrie-Ann Huelin: I thought it was, but I'm not 100% sure. I think it is so and. It, and it's quite specific about that it has to go through contract finder and that it goes in. There's a clause that you do that because they've got dummy text for the claws for the procurements to use.
[0:45:14] Jeremy: Not sure if I was a supply chain manager for a contractor or someone a big prime, I'm not sure how I'd feel about that, because they're going to get bombarded with loads of crap, aren't they? Yeah, the strength in your supply chain is a decent methodology and how you create it really but that's that's going to be again, I think that's one of those government things that sounds like a great idea, participation and transparency and opening the door to SMEs and things, but I think that might be a bit of a nightmare. We shall see. Yeah, we've got some questions on this one. Sorry, carry anything
[0:45:45] Carrie-Ann Huelin: just Yeah, okay, I'm going back. Thank you.
[0:45:52] Jeremy: That the metaphor. So just a bit of coaching, I guess, to my bidding, the domestic abuse thing, yeah, I'm a non Exec of a domestic abuse charity that is a spectacularly deep and obviously very sensitive subject, as with way beyond GDPR implications, yeah. And so I would get into the reading. We're not going to cover it in this webinar. I would get into the reading of what they mean by that and get ahead of it, because that's going to be a problem, I can guarantee.
[0:46:22] Carrie-Ann Huelin: Yeah. And if we I mean the complexity behind it, if we look here, there's one model, award criteria, there's two sub criteria, one KPI. So they're not asking for very, very complex demonstration of what you've done is quite behavioral and quite processy, and I think it's trying to get best practice in place for people to have a way to tackle this in the workplace and support people in the workplace and raise awareness and stuff like that. So the it's not too onerous, but it is still a subject matter that a lot of us haven't corporately addressed, and you will need to. So yes, definitely read that. Also. We're at the mercy of it being chosen as as a as one of the deeds that we respond to, and it's one of eight, so the procuring party has to feel comfortable that that's appropriate for that contract as well. Okay, so some stuff you could do, and this is like a reference to things. I'm not going to go war and peace, because I do want to answer your questions and things for the third for you to have to have a look at after this webinar, but have a think about what you're doing around modern slavery, and open your game on that if you're not doing enough. There's also a little bit in there about being able to offer sick pay to do starters instead of them having to wait for three months, and some very specific requirements around being able to do that for people as soon as they enter the workforce. So if that isn't something that you do and you get asked outcome one, and it's not tweaked by the procurer, then you probably going to have to demonstrate you have something in place to do that and understand what high growth sectors mean to you. So when you have to articulate an answer about you tackling up skilling around high growth sectors, you actually have something rational to say about that. Consider membership with social enterprise UK, and interrogate your supply chain to understand how it's made up. And maybe look at some contracts that are aligned to diverse then, like the provision of your planetary towels in women's blues and men's blues for those that have incontinence problems and things like that. And the you can usually use a social enterprise or a vcse for things like that. And if you're not, then let's, let's make sure you're on that looking at social value and environmental teams joining up on things for outcome four and four outcome five, the domestic abuse piece. There is a covenant, and there is some membership with either as well that you can look at. And I think there is a free version of membership with them as well. So it doesn't necessarily
[0:47:43] Carrie-Ann Huelin: mean it's going to cost you a lot of money, look at being able to demonstrate you have a minimum understanding of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in the business broke six, and understand specific barriers to for underrepresented people that you want to tackle and review that annually for seven consider some health and well being. Stuff for eight. So GP sessions in offices aligning to ISO 45,003 and when you've put stuff in place for stuff like apps and stuff for health and well being, just if people are using it, because it's a bit pumped, if you put it in and then. Are using it risk assess the model KPIs for data, capture gaps, to look at the KPIs in the list and say, Are we do we have data to meet that KPI? And if we don't, you're going to have to plan some change management. Finally, if you haven't answered a PPN question before, map an existing tender response into the model question, and see where you don't have collateral to answer elements of the model question, and then go and fix that, because it's quite convoluted and you'll have gaps if you've not done it before, you'll need to write some new stuff. So be ready for that. Don't forget, clients are supposed to sense check what they're asking for, map it to local and regional needs. They're also only supposed to ask for one outcome. There are other ppms to look at and list them there. You can challenge how the model is applied if you think they've not followed the guidance. So don't be shy. Max and sub criteria. You've got a mixture of the active and passive requirements that listed doing words I just told you. So pay attention to what you're having to articulate you're doing. Is it ensuring? Is it I don't got one of the other words offering whatever the other words were, and frameworks might get a bit weird. It's unclear how it's going to manifest in terms of frameworks, and I can send a little note on that at the bottom of the slide, in terms of what they've said so far, but I won't answer questions, and we've not got loads of time, because I've so let's answer some questions. But I
[0:51:43] Jeremy: asked someone because we went didn't we were very good chat. So yeah, I'll pick some up for you, Carrie-Ann so do my friend Charlotte. I think for one asks, Do you think that outcomes, sub criteria and KPIs will change more regularly over time? And I'll connect that to Anna has asked, do we think the new mission focus will date the model politically, and mean that things will undergo reviews as we get changes in government and all that kind of stuff,
[0:52:13] Carrie-Ann Huelin: so history tells us they're going to leave it like it is for as long as possible, and that it might not even be on the radar for change through any political stuff that happened, because we weren't even sure with the new labor government, government now that they were going to update the Social volume model and stuff it was, it was a surprise to people. We had our suspicions, don't get me wrong, because we've all got common sense, but once they've published something, they tend not to meddle. And I think the other thing is, we are still seeing budget cuts and staffing cuts within public sector. So expertise is getting less, not more, within the public sector organization, so their ability to learn something new and pivot is going to get less, and it's taken a huge amount of time and money to get everybody up skilled for the new Acts and the new ppns and the new model. And so they were going to be fighting to retain that staff that have done all that training, and they're not going to want to distract them with more training and upskilling, which they have to do if they change this stuff.
[0:53:34] Jeremy: I think I saw a LinkedIn post by a guy called Mark Johnson yesterday. He's written a bit of a sort of crazy of all of this. And his major criticism, which chimed with me, was, there's no thinking here in terms of opportunity to collaborate across government departments or leverage scale. You know, economies of scale, those kind of things, all of this one procurement, which is stupid. You know, there's shed loads of procurements going along there. We could leverage the scale of these things. We almost industrialized the social value response. So that's quite silly, my friends,
[0:54:17] Carrie-Ann Huelin: they have said in the documentation, in really wooly little statements that they want. I just found in my notes, because I got old enough, they want to see partnership across organizational boundaries.
[0:54:32] Jeremy: But it's not they're not enabling procurements to tap into that. No, it's
[0:54:39] Carrie-Ann Huelin: a vague statement without anything, really be fine. So I think they kind of know they should be doing that stuff, but it's just not supported. Yeah, which
[0:54:48] Jeremy: leads me back to a point right from the start about the mod being able to do what they want, from Catherine, a question from Sean about that. Apparently Sean was saying that the. Mod of Birmingham, NEC tomorrow at Procurement Act live, because everyone loves to make a bit of money out of these things. So hopefully someone gets to ask the question, first hand there, but it is interesting that they can opt out. Obviously, you know, the pm has just committed yesterday to upping spending yet, which she is picked up. Obviously, that's an opportunity for us carry on sure actually be fun for them. So
[0:55:39] Carrie-Ann Huelin: they'll do something. I don't think they're going to show because there's such a voting piece. I think they've made a case for what's on the table not being fit for purpose for them for some reason, but I don't know what the reason is. And in all the in all the kind of stuff with with this, there is caveats that, like a public body, can write their own Mac or set of sub criteria or KPIs if they can justify that, and they can tweet them so they can take some criteria out if they don't think it applies, and stuff like that. I don't think anybody is going to do any of that, because everybody's going to be so busy and distracted, but it's written in there that they can so it must be somewhat pretty specific that the mod think isn't right. Because they could have written their own Max and ignored what was in there if they really wanted to align, but they obviously don't. Yeah, I think they'll do something
[0:56:35] Jeremy: on their really big public stuff, like whatever it is they do. So just purchase Terra firmas. So service personnel housing back for a few billion quid, so they suddenly own a shitload of houses again. And what, what are they going to do with that would be quite interesting. That'll be whatever happens, that will be a series or a large contract that's in the public interest. They should do something significant in terms of
[0:57:01] Carrie-Ann Huelin: social The other thing is, there's mandatory publishing of some KPI data in amongst this stuff as well, and guys will only have spent half an hour or 45 minutes so to chat. But there's loads of other stuff that's not COVID. So maybe it's because the mod are comfortable publishing some, some minimum sets of KPIs for security and confidentiality reasons. So could be that, not sure what? I think they'll do something.
[0:57:30] Jeremy: Yeah, they'll do something. The ones keep an eye on will be crown commercial services, construction services, framework bid that's due to come out in the next couple of months. I forget when, but the end, the defense get to ask their they the only central government department they get to ask their own questions as part of that tender for their lot or they have. It'd be interesting to see what comes out this time, but an eye on the questions that they are get. I'd express an interest and get hold of the documents just to see what questions are that they ask in that. So I think that quite telling. And that's quite a big one, quite a public one. But what they do with more military, you know, deployment stuff, as they're buying up kit and stuff and things might be a bit more gray, we'll have to see the other thing, Carrie and I was very disappointed to hear that on the National Hospital program, you mentioned health in there is mentioned specifically on the National Hospital program, they had a bunch of social value consultants write them a bunch of stuff in terms of what they should be doing at the center to kind of engender or make social value happen at an industrial scale, and they're bolded and taken out. Yeah,
[0:58:46] Jeremy: yes, I wasn't from Carrie-Ann, by the way. That was from someone else,
Here is the rest of the transcript with the speaker names:
[0:58:49] Carrie-Ann Huelin: but there wasn't me. Yeah, try and throw me under the bus there. But no. Disappointing. So they're just going
[0:58:56] Jeremy: to use a standard model, you know, believe that the contractors will do some stuff. The contractors will now, now make up a methodology with very low numbers in it, because it doesn't matter.
[0:59:08] Carrie-Ann Huelin: And well, some of them will, I'll give some of them some credit that they'll still put on a added value offers together, like some contractors will do the right thing. Sure they will.
[0:59:23] Jeremy: Will there be any wiggle room if you are unable to deliver on an SV commitment, as they are making it part of part of the contract? For example, if you said that you were willing to do 20 hours, but the value of the contract wasn't what you thought when you're into delivery and you only deliver 10, would they be penalized the contract canceled, etc, etc.
[0:59:45] Carrie-Ann Huelin: And I think the process for dealing with naughty people that aren't meeting the KPIs is dependent on how they manifest it in the contract, whether it's clause a KPI or a pi, the. They've all got different mechanisms for how they look at your performance. Haven't seen anything scary about, you know, kind of canceling you as a default mechanism for if you're not performing. But there are, there is stuff in the act itself about serious consequences for people that shirk their commitment on a regular basis. So as you go up the tree from the model through the statement up to the act, then the further up you get, the worse the consequences could be. So I think on the ground, you will have chance to negotiate through with your client, or your framework about not being able to do something, and if you reason the honorable for that, or you want to offer something else instead, it will be completely okay to do that. And I think if you thought sod it several times, you might actually get barred from procuring, from responding to procurement, for that client, or framework, all
[1:01:05] Jeremy: public sector clients,
[1:01:09] Carrie-Ann Huelin: or everybody. Yes, one, one for all.
[1:01:11] Jeremy: So, but I say in that particular instance, if the scope has changed or something,
[1:01:19] Carrie-Ann Huelin: then you find the other way that, if the cost has increased because materials and labor have increased, cost wise, but the actual scope is the same, then they shouldn't be asking you to do more. If you've not got more people and more stuff that you're doing, it's just the stuff you're doing is more expensive that doesn't generate more social value requirements. So the other way around, you shouldn't accept if 20% of the cost has increased, you shouldn't be doing 20% more social value as a as a default. That's not the assumption they should be making. Okay, good
[1:01:51] Jeremy: to say. Thank you, Carrie-Ann there's loads of questions that we haven't got to I suspect, what might be a good idea is that we come back together again in a few weeks time, maybe a month or six weeks time, once we've seen some procurements begin to happen, and we have a bit of a wash up session on what we're finding here, because Scott and Olivia are asking questions about frameworks, for instance, stuff like that, we're going to need to see. I think it will be interesting to see what CCS do with theirs. And there are a couple of big ones coming down quite fast. So yeah, we'll get to it. Thank you very much everybody. Thanks for the thanks for everybody on the Q and A, sorry, I forgot to switch the chat on the Q and A's worked. So yeah, the recording of this will go out by email today or tomorrow, when the Wednesday or Thursday 2637 keep an eye out for all of the other free stuff that you can sign up for as part of that. And I can say, I think I'll put Carrie, arms up, arm up, her back to come back together once we can see how the land lies when this stuff starts to land. Thanks very much. Thank you. Have a good rest of the day. Bye.
