Home  Latest News Getting a foot in the door
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Getting a foot in the door |
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Each year SMEs in Scotland win around £8 billion pounds of business from the Scottish public sector. This year, the figure will go up, not down, because of the massive investment associated with the Clyde Gateway and Commonwealth Games. Inevitably, the Scottish business community is split between those who win the lucrative contracts, and those who don’t. Nobody can deny that the Scottish public sector is taking huge efforts to produce as fair and open a system as possible, and to banish forever the old adage that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. However, is the difficulty in “what you know” just as much a barrier for SMEs? Enterprising News brought together two of the most influential figures in Scottish public procurement: Lee Ferguson of the Scottish Procurement Directorate, and Ian Manson, managing director of Clyde Gateway.
EN: What’s your view on the current way procurement is handled?
Lee Ferguson: Historically, public sector procurement has been quite institutionalized – non standardization, non co-ordination of approach. But that changed when the National Audit office looked into health. We’ve made huge inroads to change and we’re going to make more over the coming years. It’s not a quick process as public sector procurement has been doing its own thing for a long time. We’ve come a long way but we’ve still got a bit to go.
Ian Manson: There is room for significant improvements and in the Gateway area we’re making sure that local companies are aware of all the procurement activities that are underway and how they can access them.
We’re making sure that we put community benefit clauses into our major capital works contracts and it’s a condition of these clauses that local companies get an opportunity to bid for any subcontracts.
EN: FSB and the Scottish Chambers say their members are being frozen out of the tendering process as local authorities look to cut costs by merging smaller contracts together. Do you agree?
LF:. No I don’t agree. There has been a huge investment in time, money and effort in supporting small Scottish businesses through our business clubs such as the Supplier Development Programme which provides support to small businesses and micro businesses on how to make themselves ready and they are closely linked to the Intellectual Assets Centre who in tandem look at small businesses and give them support and see what policies and development they need to pull together so that they can trade effectively as there is a lot of policy type information that is requested as part of a public sector tendering process. In addition the Scottish Government has invested in new technology – the Public Contract Scotland portal. It’s phenomenal. We’d estimated around 30,000 suppliers by December 2010 but we’re already at 37,000 so we’re way ahead.
IM: I don’t have any experience of that happening. The contracts that we’re producing are ones that are the right size for what we’re trying to achieve. I couldn’t comment on what anybody else is doing as I don’t have any experience of that.
EN: The Scottish Government is set to publish research into the barriers of entry into public procurement – what do you feel the main barriers are and what can be done to remove them?
LF: The processes and the procedures and the differences between them are the major barriers. From an SME point of view, some small companies just find it too difficult – the tender documents are like War and Peace, it’s not very clear what’s expected of them, it’s not very clear what areas to focus on. One way to remove barriers is to get everyone tendering in the same place, and to standardise it. Can we make PQQs standard across the sector so if you do one in Dumfries & Galloway Council one for the Fife Health Service, it looks the same – it sounds very easy but it’s not and it’s going to take a bit of time. The good news is we are looking at it and in the next two years I think it will give significant benefit to both buyers and suppliers.
EN: What’s the best way of getting the procurement message out to SMEs?
LF: We’re linked directly in with the FSB, CBI and the Chambers of Commerce around Scotland. We also have a media campaign and attend various regional business events and the national procurement forums such as the recent Meet the Buyer in Glasgow. The biggest procurement event is in October – Procurex – so we have a stand there. We distribute marketing material, there’s information on our website so we do a lot of that, making it free, easy and open at these events.
We’ve been touring around Scotland for the last 11 months attending major events and the proof of the pudding is from that we enjoy between fifty and a hundred and three thousand new supplier registrations per month. So something is working.
IM: I’ve spoken to local companies who have not been aware of the opportunities on offer and have been amazed about the scale of what’s coming to the area through the regeneration and the Games and I have personally encouraged a number of companies to get registered and offered help where they’ve shown any problems with that. We’ll visit, we’ll leaflet, we’ll do whatever’s necessary. I’ve done a number of presentations in the area already highlighting the opportunities that are coming including the East End Business Club. We’re doing everything we can to get the message out because for many companies it’s now or never.
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