Highways Agency

Highways Agency Procurement Strategy

This was published in November 2001 and it emphasised that procurement is at the heart of the Agency's business - good procurement practice and good relationships with our supply chains are essential to the effective delivery of best value solutions and services.

We have been successful in procuring projects and services that are consistent with the principles of the Procurement Strategy :

• The new Managing Agent Contracts,
• The Construction Management Frameworks,
• The Consultancy Frameworks for Advice and Design and,
• The procurement of major road schemes using Early Contractor Involvement

and are examples which provide :

• Integrated and incentivised supply chains
• Clear points of responsibility
• Partnerships based on long term relationships
• Performance measurement with continual improvement targets.

As a consequence, Communities have been formed which are all inter linked and all functioning in broadly similar ways to allow the Agency to better communicate with and understand the ultimate capability of its supply chain.

The Community

A Community has to be underpinned by firm foundations to provide an environment that will allow objectives to be achieved. Based on our experience of existing HA communities the foundations of the R&D / Technical Consultancy Supply Chain Community are likely to include:

• Measurement
• Communication
• Best practice
• Knowledge share
• Innovation

There are benefits to the supply chain in working within a Community environment. These include :

• A better understanding of forward programmes which will help suppliers to plan their future resource requirements
• The opportunity to discuss issues of common interest
• The identification of any constraints that may be preventing suppliers from delivering best value.