Meeting documents

To be presented by:

·         Mr Neil Gibson – Executive Director, Transport, Economy and Environment Business Unit.

·         Mr Jonathon Noble – Commercial Director.

Mr N Gibson, Executive Director for Transport Economy and Environment (TEE) and Mr J Noble, Commercial Director attended the meeting to update Members on the findings from an internal audit of contract management practices across the organisation and the action plan arising from this.

Mr Noble gave an overview of the current contract management position across the organisation and highlighted that the majority of contracts were managed with the business units (BU’s), with every manager required to self-assess and only a small corporate resource was available, of which the Supplier Relationship Manager (SRM) was currently vacant.

There had been a request for an internal audit which looked at a sample of contracts across the organisation. This had identified pockets of good practice as well as areas for improvement.  These findings had formed the basis of the Improvement Plan included in the report. 

Mr Noble confirmed that the Corporate Management Team (CMT) had agreed to put forward a bid as part of the MTP process for additional training for Contract Managers, Directors and Members.

The Committee discussed concerns around the resource and training available for contract management and Mr Noble confirmed that it was inconsistent across the organisation and that the central level of expertise to support BUs was low.

Mr Noble highlighted the need to recruit to the SRM role which has proved hard to fill in the past and the need for commitment from the BUs to drive forward the improvement plan.  The recruitment of this post was ongoing. 

The Committee discussed concerns around how robust the organisation was to react should the external delivery of a service fail and the importance of forward planning and mitigating potential risks.   Mr Noble stated that while foreseeing all risks was impossible the improvement plan would help address these areas of concern.

Mr N Gibson stated that whilst in some cases there was poor use of the Contract Management Application (CMA) this did not mean poor contract management.  Discussions were taking place as to how systems and data would better link up.  

The Committee discussed the resource issue.  Mr Noble confirmed that CMT were happy with the current model but would keep this under review as the improvement plan progressed.  It was also confirmed that there would be investment in a refresh of the training previously given and the development of communities of best practice. 

The Committee discussed the approaches to contract management and for this to not only include an arms-length approach but also requiring physical visits to providers, for example to care homes.  Mr Gibson confirmed that extra resource had been put into some areas where this was appropriate but having a lean contract management resource had meant that the focus had been on the contract framework/ KPIs. 

The importance of Member involvement as part of the improvement plan was also raised. It was noted that Members could be offered training and briefings to raise Member awareness.  The Committee requested that Mr Gibson pick this discussion up with Member Services.

ACTION: Mr N Gibson

The Committee commented on the need to see how each BU was performing, with success being measured in various ways, with self-assessments being carried out against a recognised maturity model.  There would be an expectation that all contracts were scoring 3 (good).  Self-assessments had been carried out for organisations 300 most important contracts and checks and challenges (10%) were also carried out by internal audit.  This would be rerun again in a two years’ time. 

The framework the team had measured against was discussed as well as its consistency.  Mr Gibson confirmed that the County Council were making significant progress in its effectiveness in delivering CMA and interest had been shown by other bodies in receiving training provided by the County Council.

RESOLVED: The Committee noted the update report and requested Officers come back to the Committee in February 2018 with an update on the progress against the Improvement Plan.

ACTION: Ms Gibb