Pro­cure­ment Strategy

Intro­duc­tion

1. This Pro­cure­ment Strategy sets out the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Authority’s approach to its sourcing of sup­plies of goods and ser­vices in sup­port of deliv­ery of its object­ives and in deploy­ment of its pub­lic funds.

2. Our Pro­cure­ment Strategy will guide our approach and pro­ced­ures in instances where the Park Author­ity determ­ines the best approach to deliv­er ele­ments of our ser­vices and achieve our stra­tegic object­ives is through secur­ing out­sourced, third-party sup­ply of goods or ser­vices. The Park Author­ity deliv­ers its oper­a­tion­al plans and achieves its activ­it­ies and its stra­tegic object­ives through a blend of employed staff, grant fund­ing awar­ded to third-party organ­isa­tions, and con­tract­ing for the sup­ply of goods and ser­vices. While we seek to build the skills and expert­ise of our own staff, and grant fund oth­er organ­isa­tions with rel­ev­ant know­ledge and deliv­ery capa­city with­in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park (as ele­ments of our blen­ded deliv­ery mod­el), some aspects of our oper­a­tions will require us to bring in skills, exper­i­ence, goods and ser­vices from the com­mer­cial sec­tor. This Pro­cure­ment Strategy guides our approach to this strand of our deliv­ery mix.

3. The strategy will provide a route that is com­pli­ant with the Scot­tish Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tions, embod­ied in the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Reform (Scot­land) Act 2014, The Pub­lic Con­tracts (Scot­land) Reg­u­la­tions 2015, and The Pro­cure­ment (Scot­land) Reg­u­la­tions 2016.

4. It is import­ant that the strategy prop­erly reflects the stra­tegic pri­or­it­ies of the Park Author­ity as a whole and this means that pro­cure­ment needs to be respons­ive to the needs of ser­vice depart­ments with­in the Park Author­ity and must be agile enough to deal with emer­ging requirements.

5. As well as describ­ing in detail how pro­cure­ment will sup­port all object­ives with­in the Park Authority’s Cor­por­ate Plan, the strategy sets out sev­er­al key object­ives for pro­cure­ment dur­ing the year.

Key Object­ives

a) To obtain value for money from every pur­chase b) To make the Park Author­ity a prized cus­tom­er c) To be lean and effi­cient in our pro­cure­ment d) To achieve social, eco­nom­ic, and envir­on­ment­al goals e) To trade only with sup­pli­ers who behave eth­ic­ally f) To reduce the envir­on­ment­al foot­print of the sup­ply chain

Risk Mit­ig­a­tion

The strategy estab­lishes the Park Authority’s plat­form to mit­ig­ate five key risks inher­ent in any pub­lic sec­tor procurement:

a) Com­mer­cial Risk: That either the price object­ives are not achieved up front or there are oth­er costs that arise dur­ing the con­tract and dimin­ish the over­all bene­fits. b) Tech­nic­al Risk: This con­cerns the dif­fi­culty in being able to spe­cify the desired out­come and on the mar­ket being unable to deliv­er to the spe­cific­a­tion. c) Per­form­ance Risk: This con­cerns the abil­ity of sup­pli­ers to per­form con­sist­ently over the life of the con­tract to deliv­er the planned bene­fits. d) Con­trac­tu­al Risk: Being able to rem­edy the short­com­ings in the contractor’s per­form­ance without severely dam­aging the con­tract and about avoid­ing reli­ance on the con­trac­ted sup­pli­er as the con­tract devel­ops. e) Leg­al Risk: Where a pro­cure­ment is found unsound in law, through the pub­lic pro­cure­ment rules.

Com­munity Wealth Building

The strategy will also sup­port a meth­od­o­logy for max­im­iz­ing any oppor­tun­it­ies for com­munity wealth build­ing or com­munity bene­fits from the Park Authority’s deploy­ment of pub­lic fin­ance through its pur­chas­ing and pro­cure­ment activ­it­ies. This meth­od­o­logy will be developed and approved sep­ar­ately to this pro­cure­ment strategy in tan­dem with the Park Authority’s wider approach to devel­op­ing a Well­being Eco­nomy for the Cairngorms Nation­al Park.

Role of the Pro­cure­ment Officer

The role of the Pro­cure­ment Officer is to enable oper­a­tion­al teams to obtain the goods, ser­vices and works they require, at the cor­rect time, to the cor­rect qual­ity and to achieve over­all best value.

How Pro­cure­ment Will Sup­port Park Author­ity Objectives

1. The best way for pro­cure­ment to sup­port the deliv­ery of the Park Authority’s object­ives is to ensure that Park Author­ity oper­a­tion­al teams are able to source the mater­i­als, extern­al ser­vices and works needed to achieve planned deliv­ery. Those materials/​services/​works must be avail­able at the right time for the oper­a­tion­al deliv­ery and at the best com­bin­a­tion of qual­ity and price avail­able from the mar­ket at any giv­en time.

2. The Park Authority’s Cor­por­ate Plan for 2023 to 2027 cov­ers a range of object­ives across three themes of Nature, People and Place, plus intern­al organ­isa­tion­ally focused objectives.

3. All areas with­in the Park Authority’s Cor­por­ate Plan will be sup­por­ted by deliv­er­ing pro­cure­ment in accord­ance with this strategy in the fol­low­ing ways:

a) Pro­mote fair work prac­tices and the Scot­tish liv­ing wage in our pro­cure­ment pro­cesses. b) In con­junc­tion with our approaches to com­munity wealth build­ing, deliv­er against a dynam­ic com­munity wish list, or altern­at­ively, against a com­munity devel­op­ment action plan, that can be ful­filled through the use of com­munity bene­fit clauses in pro­cure­ment exer­cises. c) Encour­age sup­pli­ers and con­tract­ors to recruit mod­ern appren­tices and gradu­ate train­ees, where the scale of con­tract­ing oppor­tun­it­ies over time mer­its the inclu­sion of encour­age­ments of this scale with­in pur­chas­ing approaches to the mar­ket. d) Encour­age increased oppor­tun­it­ies for SMEs and Third Sec­tor organ­isa­tions to par­ti­cip­ate in ten­der­ing oppor­tun­it­ies by includ­ing appro­pri­ate lot­ting with­in tender doc­u­ments, to ensure poten­tial bid­ders with­in these sec­tors have increased to take part and that we don’t cre­ate unne­ces­sary bar­ri­ers to par­ti­cip­a­tion. e) Incentiv­ise con­tract­ors to bring for­ward sus­tain­able solu­tions to deliv­er con­tracts, by focus­ing on out­comes in our spe­cific­a­tions, rather than defin­ing the meth­od by which these out­comes are to be achieved. In doing so, our aim is to encour­age innov­a­tion in design. f) Ensure sus­tain­ab­il­ity is con­sidered in devel­op­ing the spe­cific­a­tion for every pro­cure­ment in appro­pri­ate, prag­mat­ic and achiev­able approaches which help deliv­er the Park Authority’s Net Zero cor­por­ate plan objective.

Leg­al Com­pli­ance and Governance

1. The reg­u­lat­ory frame­work for pub­lic pro­cure­ment in Scot­land is com­plex and the thresholds at which leg­al reg­u­la­tions begin are low in rela­tion to oth­er territories.

2. The Pro­cure­ment Officer has know­ledge of the pro­cure­ment rules and will con­tin­ue to make all Park Author­ity officers who pro­cure aware of the rules that affect their delivery.

3. Using our stra­tegic approach, we will assess the risks of every pro­cure­ment exer­cise as part of the devel­op­ment of our approach both to pro­cure­ment exer­cises and to spe­cific­a­tion sourcing strategies. One of those risks is the leg­al risk of get­ting some­thing wrong in the pro­cess. This is likely to be par­tic­u­larly the case where the pur­suit of oth­er object­ives leads us to depart from the stand­ard meth­od­o­logy. Any risks iden­ti­fied will be made known to the Pro­cure­ment Officer and through them to the seni­or cor­por­ate man­agers respons­ible for over­sight of this strategy, who will check the doc­u­ments for an appro­pri­ate, risk-man­aged approach to com­pli­ance, pri­or to issue to the marketplace.

4. Our cent­ral sourcing approach with­in this strategy focuses on the required use of Pub­lic Con­tracts Scot­land (PCS) as the expec­ted route to mar­ket for pro­cure­ment and sourcing of goods, sup­plies and ser­vices, using Route 1 of the Pro­cure­ment Jour­ney, and Route 2 where con­tract val­ues are expec­ted to be no more than £100k.

5. Bey­ond this, we will have a sup­por­ted pro­cure­ment using Scot­land Excel or oth­er pro­fes­sion­al advisors who will provide wider stra­tegic approaches to sourcing, such as sup­pli­er events, with­in a more com­pre­hens­ive pro­cure­ment plan. Con­tracts with expec­ted life­cycle val­ues of under £25k will be reviewed in-house to ensure appro­pri­ate routes to mar­ket are being used, con­sid­er­ing the wider aims of the pro­cure­ment strategy.

Pro­cure­ment Objectives

1. Pro­cure­ment is not simply the role of the Pro­cure­ment Officer and cor­por­ate man­agers. It involves every­one in the Park Author­ity who needs to obtain goods, ser­vices or works to deliv­er the ser­vice they are respons­ible for. The Pro­cure­ment Officer’s role is to empower every­one who needs to pro­cure with the con­fid­ence and skills to make low value (under £25,000) and/​or straight­for­ward pur­chases without assist­ance and to con­trib­ute pos­it­ively to the pro­cure­ment pro­cess for high­er value and more com­plex procurements.

2. The Pro­cure­ment Officer and/​or extern­al pro­cure­ment sup­port will always be involved in a pro­cure­ment pro­cess where the life­cycle costs exceed £50,000 and the pro­cess there­fore fol­lows Route 2 of the Scot­tish Government’s pro­cure­ment jour­neys, or where the pro­cure­ment requires nov­el or innov­at­ive solu­tions to sup­port ser­vice deliv­ery needs.

3. Test­ing pro­cure­ment plans with the Pro­cure­ment Officer for con­tracts with estim­ated val­ues of £25,000 and over is also advised, to ensure as a min­im­um that poten­tial life­cycle costs have been inde­pend­ently checked and that a route 1 pro­cure­ment jour­ney to ful­fil the require­ment is appropriate.

4. Pro­cure­ment across the Park Author­ity, how­ever car­ried out, will be achieved in a man­ner that is fair and trans­par­ent, by mem­bers of staff who are con­fid­ent, know­ledge­able and who show respect for and under­stand­ing of the mar­ket­place they are oper­at­ing in. In each suc­ceed­ing con­tract, we will learn les­sons from the pre­vi­ous con­tract, rem­edy­ing weak­nesses and build­ing on what went well.

5. We will oper­ate with the fol­low­ing spe­cif­ic object­ives to the fore.

To Obtain Value for Money from Every Purchase

1. Value for money in pro­cure­ment terms, is not about accept­ing the low­est price. We will use a quality/​price approach and eval­u­ate all the costs asso­ci­ated with a pur­chase over the life­time of the con­tract or of the delivered product along­side estab­lished qual­ity cri­ter­ia. Where appro­pri­ate we will con­tin­ue to extract value dur­ing the oper­a­tion of a con­tract, by enga­ging act­ively in con­tract man­age­ment, by using key per­form­ance indic­at­ors to drive con­tinu­ous improve­ment, and by build­ing busi­ness rela­tion­ships dur­ing long-term contracts.

To Be a Prized Customer

1. We want to work with the best con­tract­ors and sup­pli­ers in the mar­ket. In order to do this, it is import­ant that we place ourselves as a val­ued cus­tom­er and one those organ­isa­tions are keen to work with.

2. There will be a single Park Author­ity ​‘con­tract own­er’ for each con­tract awar­ded. This per­son will be noti­fied to the sup­pli­er and will provide a single point of con­tact for the con­tract­or to seek fur­ther inform­a­tion or ask for assistance.

3. A sched­ule of pay­ments will be agreed with sup­pli­ers at the begin­ning of each con­tract and when a pay­ment is triggered on the sched­ule, the Park Author­ity will aim to have the money in the supplier’s bank account with­in 10 days.

4. Where sup­pli­ers have sub­mit­ted a bid for a Park Author­ity con­tract and not been suc­cess­ful, we will inform them promptly of the award decision. We will provide them with feed­back on their bid if reques­ted to do so.

To Be Lean and Effi­cient in Our Procurement

1. A pro­cure­ment pro­cess, once begun, should be com­pleted as soon as pos­sible. Our pre­par­a­tion will be thor­ough so that the pro­cess can run without unne­ces­sary delays. In a reg­u­lated con­tract, the tar­get from issu­ing a con­tract notice to mak­ing the award of the con­tract will be 60 days.

2. It is import­ant to sup­pli­ers that the time gap between their sub­mit­ting a priced tender and receiv­ing an award of con­tract is kept to an abso­lute min­im­um. Our tar­get, with pre-author­ised budget in place to cov­er con­tract value, is that the gap from tender clos­ing date to award of con­tract should be no more than 30 days.

Com­munity Wealth Building

1. Com­munity Wealth Build­ing (CWB) is a people-centred approach to loc­al eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, which redir­ects wealth back into the loc­al eco­nomy, and places con­trol and bene­fits into the hands of loc­al people. Tra­di­tion­al pub­lic sec­tor policy has focused on the redis­tri­bu­tion of wealth after it is cre­ated, where­as com­munity wealth build­ing focuses on mech­an­isms to ensure that wealth is shared as it’s cre­ated. CWB activ­it­ies are arranged over the five pil­lar areas of spend­ing, land and prop­erty, fin­ance, work­force and inclus­ive ownership.

2. Spend­ing: max­im­iz­ing com­munity bene­fits through pro­cure­ment, devel­op­ing enter­prises, fair work and short­er sup­ply chains.

3. Land and Prop­erty: grow­ing the social, eco­lo­gic­al, fin­an­cial and eco­nom­ic value that loc­al com­munit­ies gain from land and prop­erty assets.

4. Fin­ance: ensur­ing that pro­cure­ment activ­it­ies work where pos­sible for loc­al people, loc­al com­munit­ies and loc­al businesses.

5. Work­force: increas­ing fair work and devel­op­ing loc­al labour mar­kets that sup­port the well­being of com­munit­ies. The Park Author­ity will sup­port min­im­um wage object­ives, such as a require­ment that our con­tract­ors provide at least the real Liv­ing Wage through this aspect of our pro­cure­ment strategy.

6. Inclus­ive own­er­ship: devel­op­ing more loc­al and social enter­prises that gen­er­ate com­munity wealth.

7. The Pro­cure­ment Officer will have a key role in devel­op­ing leg­ally com­pli­ant approaches to pro­cure­ment that sup­port the Park Author­ity in deliv­er­ing com­munity wealth build­ing bene­fits through its spend­ing activ­it­ies. To achieve this, the Park Author­ity will:

Trade Only With Sup­pli­ers Who Behave Ethically

1. Com­pan­ies who trade with the Park Author­ity will respect the envir­on­ment and com­ply with the laws of their own coun­tries. They will not infringe human rights, and they will not be involved with mod­ern slavery. They will respect their own sub-con­tract­ors and sup­pli­ers and treat them fairly. They will not engage in fraud, bribery or cor­rup­tion. Those sup­pli­ers will not only behave eth­ic­ally them­selves, but they will be act­ive in ensur­ing that the same eth­ic­al prac­tices are main­tained in their own sup­ply chains.

2. The Park Author­ity will act­ively sup­port the Fair Work agenda through its inclu­sion of Fair Work Prac­tice require­ments as a scored ele­ment of all rel­ev­ant tenders. We will use the ten­der­ing pro­cess to make clear our com­mit­ment as a Liv­ing Wage Accred­ited employ­er by ensur­ing that con­tract­ors pay­ing the Liv­ing Wage or who com­mit to as part of their tender will be benefited in the scor­ing of tenders rel­at­ive to others.

3. Use pro­cure­ment as a tool to sup­port pos­it­ive influ­ence on cli­mate action plans.

4. To this end, the Park Author­ity will seek to identi­fy envir­on­ment­al issues that could present as either oppor­tun­it­ies or risks, ensur­ing that con­tracts are optim­ised for pos­it­ive outcomes.

5. At the com­mence­ment of every pro­cure­ment the Park Author­ity will exam­ine wheth­er we need to buy at all. This will mean mak­ing sure that exist­ing assets are util­ised for their full eco­nom­ic life and extend­ing the life is con­sidered before replace­ment. Pur­chases should be made with a view to the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy and should be assessed on whole life costs.

6. Sus­tain­ab­il­ity will be con­sidered in devel­op­ing the spe­cific­a­tion for every pro­cure­ment. Spe­cific­a­tions and cri­ter­ia for con­tract awards will focus on ​‘full life­cycle impacts,’ con­sid­er­ing main­ten­ance and decom­mis­sion­ing aspects.

Mon­it­or­ing, Review­ing and Report­ing on Strategies

1. The Park Author­ity has com­mit­ted to a trans­form­a­tion pro­gramme on pro­cure­ment over 2024 and 2025 to address the increas­ing scale and com­plex­ity of its pro­cure­ment activ­it­ies, which them­selves reflect the increas­ing scale and breadth of the organisation’s oper­a­tions. This includes invest­ment in addi­tion­al staff resource and extern­al pro­cure­ment sup­port ser­vices. Our action plan deliv­ery will be mon­itored ini­tially monthly by seni­or man­agers and board rep­res­ent­at­ives, and sub­sequently quarterly by man­age­ment with over­sight and scru­tiny from the board’s Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee over the course of its delivery.

2. Wider report­ing will be covered by the Annu­al Pro­cure­ment Report.

3. Under the Pro­cure­ment Reform Act of 2014, when annu­al pro­cure­ment spend reaches £5 mil­lion, the Park Author­ity is required by Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment to pro­duce an Annu­al Pro­cure­ment Report that records per­form­ance against this strategy. The report will include the fol­low­ing stat­utory reporting:

a) Reg­u­lated pro­cure­ments com­pleted in the rel­ev­ant peri­od. b) Details of pro­cure­ments under­taken in accord­ance with the strategy. c) How the pro­cure­ments under­taken have achieved the policies set out in the strategy and con­trib­uted to the wider aims and object­ives of the Park Author­ity. d) Details of policies not met in rel­ev­ant peri­od and how these will be achieved in the future. e) Planned pro­cure­ment over the next two years.

1. We will also seek to report on key per­form­ance indic­at­ors drawn from this strategy.

Excep­tions

1. There will be excep­tion­al cir­cum­stances whereby non-com­pet­it­ive awards of con­tracts may be jus­ti­fied and mer­ited. The Park Authority’s Frame­work Agree­ment with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment estab­lishes a del­eg­ated author­ity for non-com­pet­it­ive con­tracts awards to be approved where there is jus­ti­fic­a­tion for doing so.

2. Any excep­tion to our pro­cure­ment expect­a­tions where a non-com­pet­it­ive action is pro­posed must be approved by either the Chief Exec­ut­ive as the Account­able Officer respons­ible for the Park Authority’s com­pli­ance with the terms of the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Frame­work Agree­ment, or the Deputy Chief Executive/​Director of Cor­por­ate Ser­vices. Non-com­pet­it­ive awards approved will be recor­ded and drawn into annu­al pro­cure­ment reports to sup­port trans­par­ency of the Park Authority’s pur­chas­ing activities.

3. For clar­ity, this pro­vi­sion does not cov­er very low value items where there are inher­ently no altern­ate sup­pli­ers, such as travel arrange­ments and accom­mod­a­tion arrange­ments and small items of office equip­ment or consumables.

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