Contract and Supplier management / monitoring
Any contracting authority which is required by the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 to produce and publish an annual procurement report must include information on how its procurement complied with the organisation’s procurement strategy.
Authorities that buy food and have an annual regulated procurement spend of £5 million or above, will need to consider how they will monitor contracts that include user enhancement requirements for the purposes of the organisation’s annual report.
Embedding health and well-being into procurement is relatively easy as long as the requirements of an individual procurement reflect the objectives of the organisation as set out in relevant policies and / or strategies. Supplier engagement is essential to allow the market to understand and prepare for developing requirements and this must be undertaken before the procurement process begins. Many health and safety requirements can be achieved through the effective evaluation and selection of a competent supplier and further requirements will be detailed in the specification and evaluated as part of the tender process. It is also essential that a weighted scoring mechanism is designed reflecting the criteria to evaluate the responses against and that this is shared with potential suppliers as part of the tender documentation.
Finally, on-going improvement and innovation can be built into the management of the contract to further develop the products and services required by the contracting organisation. Also do not forget that at the point of potential award there is always scope to reach a voluntary agreement with the supplier that they will work with you to deliver identified (and agreed) sustainable outcomes that can be captured as a contract commitment.