England’s Economic Heartland (EEH) – a group of councils with an economy the size of Wales – has started working on plans to produce a new style of procurement for the transport and infrastructure sector, Transport Network can reveal.
The regional grouping, which includes Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire county councils, is hoping to form a business plan for a procurement model that moves past frameworks to a more collaborative approach.
Dubbed a ‘delivery alliance’, the scheme follows advice from the Civil Engineering Contractors Association (CECA) to EEH, that collaboration and time savings in delivery were key to the group getting maximum value for money.
One of the central architects of the EEH alliance, Tony Ciaburro, director of environment development and transport at Northamptonshire CC, told Transport Network: ‘Our plan is to have the different players collaborating with each other to create what is effectively a joint venture, reducing their costs - possibly by up to a third - and smoothing the process towards delivery.
‘We will be building the business case up over the next three to four months. Before Christmas we hope to get the business plan approved with a view to having it up and running for April next year - when we hope to have statutory powers based around this new delivery system.’
Mr Ciaburro said the scheme has comparisons with the Highways England collaborative delivery framework system and added that EEH ‘would be speaking to Highways England about this - they are on our transport forum’s support group’.
He added that there were similar models in other sectors, such as water utilities.
Top contractors Kier, Ringway Jacobs, Skanska and WSP Parsons Brinckerhoff have already expressed strong interest, committing to ‘continue to contribute and develop this proposal to support the aims and objectives of EEH’.
In a paper for EEH on the plans, seen by Transport Network, the private companies outlined a basic five to 10 year plan, which includes commitments to the following principles:
- to collaborate seamlessly and effectively for the benefit of EEH
- to work with EEH to deliver efficiencies and savings
- offering our investment and bringing other investors to EEH
- setting up a delivery structure to provide collaboration and contact points as one ‘go to’ place to access the delivery alliance
The plan has already been approved in principle by the EEH’s Leaders Board, which includes the leaders of all participating councils and members of connected Local Enterprise Partnerships.
