The Hyde Group has opened up its supplier framework, allowing other organisations to access its best value contracts. The initiative is attracting a lot of interest from other housing associations and local authorities, like Catalyst Housing, looking to achieve efficiency savings on projects. Einav Ben-Yehuda, business transformation & procurement director at The Hyde Group, has all the details.
Public sector bodies in the UK purchase each year an estimated £15bn worth of goods and services, all following strict and rather complex European procurement laws and procedures. Achieving full legal compliance is regarded by many as daunting and resource intensive, especially for small or medium size organisations who often lack the required specialist expertise and scale. Larger organisations, should in theory be better equipped, however many seem to struggle to recruit and retain the high calibre commercial expertise required to secure the best deals while remaining 100% compliant to a complex set of rules and regulations.
The Hyde Group, one of the largest landlords in the UK, has this year piloted an innovative approach to help colleagues across the public and voluntary sectors address these long standing challenges. During 2015, Hyde’s multi-award winning, sector leading procurement function, has started allowing colleague organisations a quick, complaint access to its supplier agreements without having to run a full tender process.
Andy Clorley, Hyde’s interim head of procurement says: “Public Procurement has over time become a long and often expensive process for many authorities, some of whom struggle to find the capacity or commercial expertise to procure and then manage an increasingly sophisticated, commercially savvy, supply side.
“The Government is very much expecting the public sector, including social housing providers such as ourselves, to adapt, innovate and deliver efficiencies while aggressively targeting to deliver 200,000 new homes each year by 2020. We feel that providing easy access to some of our best value contracts should allow fellow organisations to save precious time and money, allowing them to better focus on delivering their core services and products for the benefit of our residents”
Case study
Catalyst Housing is one such provider who has taken advantage of Hyde’s Construction Consultancy framework. Whilst working on its Trinity Square 2 project in North London, Catalyst Housing faced issues with its existing consultant and needed a replacement quickly to ensure that the project did not fall behind or face quality control issues.
The framework allowed access to a list of pre-assessed, fully qualified consultants. One of a number of companies listed on the consultancy framework for construction management services, Stack London were able to join the project and get it delivered on time and on budget.
Once completed Trinity Square 2 will have 19 affordable homes and 41 homes under the shared ownership scheme. The north London project offers a route into home ownership for those who live or work in the London Borough of Barnet.
Maryse Shields, Catalyst head of commercial, comments: “We needed to find a replacement quickly. Stack London had already been assessed by Hyde; giving us the assurance we were going to be working with a company qualified and able to deliver the services we needed. This was certainly a lower-risk, better value and faster option than going out to tender again and meant delays were minimised.”
