Highways Agency - Safe roads, Reliable journeys, Informed travellers

The capability assessment toolkit (CAT)

4.1 structure of the CAT

The CAT has been developed using the well-established principles that underpin a number business excellence models. Other sources of information that guided its design and development include:

• the Agency's Procurement Strategy
• the Agency's values: customer service, best value, improvement, teamwork, diversity and integrity
• a number of construction industry best practice documents
• the Construction Client's Charter
• Investors in People
• supplier feedback

The CAT considers what it is that companies need to do to be effective. It is structured as follows:

A CAPABILITY ATTRIBUTES

1. Direction and leadership
2. Strategy and planning
3. People
4. Partnering
5. Processes
6. Internal resources

B CAPABILITY INDICATORS

For each attribute, three indicators describe features of the capability that could be demonstrated.

C CAPABILITY LEVEL DESCRIPTIONS

For each of the indicators there are five levels of capability, 0 to 4.

• supplier self-score handbook
• self-score framework of 18 sheets (1 per indicator) comprising:
  • self-score proformas on front of page
  • electronic self-score and next steps templates

The full framework of capability attributes, indicators and level descriptions is given in appendix III.

4.2 the CAT process

The capability assessment process has two distinct stages:

• supplier self-score
• validation by client CAT practitioners

An overview of the key stages involved in the CAT process are shown above.

4.2.1 self-score stage

Companies are asked to score themselves using a CAT self-score framework and guidelines and return those scores to the Agency's Supply Chain Management Team.

The submission is required in two parts:

• Part 1 submission
• basic information pack

This information is required to plan the validation exercise:

• company name
• company address
• company CAT Champion, ie the person within your organisation responsible for co-ordinating and submitting your CAT self-score and next steps information and assisting our client CAT practitioners with the validation exercise.
• organagram (in 2 sections please)
  • Section 1
    a diagram showing the key people within your organisation
  • Section 2
    a chart showing the entire structure of your organisation, clearly identifying the parts of your company that provide services and/or works for the Highways Agency
    a brief pen picture of the activities of those parts of your company structure that provide services and/or works for the Highways Agency
• availability dates for validation

Part 2 submission

electronic self-score and next steps templates

These comprise:

• the company's score for and evidence to support 'where we are now'
• the information to support where the company plans to be in 12 months

Further details of this stage are provided in section 5.0 of this handbook.

Please note that detailed submission requirements will be notified separately.

4.2.2 validation stage

A team of fully trained and briefed client CAT practitioners will spend time with the companies to validate the self-scores. The validated scores will be held on the Agency's procurement database and will be used in conjunction with past performance and strategic overview information to determine tender lists.

Further details of this stage are provided in section 6.0 of this handbook.

The overall CAT Process (1MB PDF)