Highways Agency

Next Steps

The consultation has helped us to focus on how we should manage the procurement of our R&D / Technical Consultancy. We will now :

• Develop new model contract documents (MCD) that fully support target cost remuneration arrangements, and the other elements recommended in the Procurement Strategy. Part of this work will be to consider whether the new MCD should be used for the replacement of the existing Consultancy Framework Agreements for Design Services (CFADS). This would standardise the Agency's R&D and consultancy MCD.
• Take forward the procurement of two National Frameworks - one for R&D and one for Technical Consultancy to provide the majority of the Agency's requirements in these areas for a five year period. The frameworks will be supported by the new MCD. In the light of the publication last October of the "National Procurement Strategy for Local Government "we will consider making the frameworks accessible to local authorities to service their highways related R&D.
• Consider building a dedicated R&D / Technical Consultancy page on the HA's website. This would be called "Doing R&D / Technical Consultancy Business with the Highways Agency" and it would give information about what we procure how we procure it and give contact points for further information. This should be particularly helpful to our smaller suppliers.
• Press ahead with the pilot for the new approach for the procurement of R&D / Technical Consultancy services and achieve an award in September 2004. The pilot is a framework for the Pavement Engineering Group ( PEG our reference 2/462), which will consolidate the replacement of three frameworks ( 2 R&D and 1 Technical Consultancy ) with fifteen suppliers, with one framework with a smaller number of lead suppliers who will provide the majority of the work through their supply chains. Expressions of interest for the consolidated framework were invited in the Official Journal of the European Union ( OJEU) in March. The closing date for the submission of the expressions of interest was the 15th April.
  The OJEU Notice referred to this consultation and advised that the PEG framework is the pilot for the new approach. Many of the respondents to the consultation expressed an interest in the pilot. We have completed the assessment of the expressions of interest and we shall be writing to the successful respondents soon.
• Use the document called "Motivating Success - A Toolkit for Performance Management - Research & Development, Technical Consultancy Framework" to manage the performance of our suppliers. The document explains why we want to measure performance, what we will be measuring and how we will do this. It will be the reference point for performance management for the PEG pilot and subsequent procurements using the new approach.