Bosses first for MoD partnering

Big changes are being made to the introductory phase of the Ministry of Defence's partnering initiative with industry after MoD officials admitted that the original programme was too ambitious.

In October, the Defence Estate Organisation, which handles the MoD's £1.5 billion annual construction budget, announced that it was going to slash dramatically the number of contractors it uses and replace them with a small number of prime contractors.

Instead of holding general workshops as originally planned, the DEO will target construction managing directors first with a one-day induction workshop intended to empower them as champions who can disseminate the partnering approach throughout the organisation. The workshops will take place at the end of January and participants will be given a copy of the MoD's handbook on partnering which is currently in production.

Two-day workshops for other senior members of the contracting teams will be held in the spring. Some will be confined to one firm or a single supply chain.

The DEO is also setting up focus groups (working parties) to look at its proposals for a new form of contract, for tendering and for bid evaluation. They are being set up partly to counter claims the MoD is imposing partnering without consultation.

"They will be small, tight focus groups and will represent all the interests within construction," said Clive Cain, the DEO's director of technical standards.

The DEO has also trimmed its plans to let a couple of large contract packages in the spring. Instead expressions of interest will be invited in April for one building costing around £20-30 million, followed by larger packages later in the year.

It has also emerged that candidates for prime contractor status will have to show evidence of their supporting documentation such as value engineering reports and risk registers. If they succeed they will be able to bid for large packages of work likely to be in the £100-200 million region. Cain said: "We will be looking for hard evidence of their documentation."

Birse is rumoured to be in with a chance of joining the elite group of contractors bidding for the first round. This is also likely to include Laing, Amec and Balfour Beatty. Whichever succeeds, they will be expected to have two or three alternative subcontractors or suppliers within each of their supply chain clusters so as to promote competition.