b"responsibility for contract management between a number of service departments rather than a centralised team.According to the survey [Chart 7], 86% of authorities vest the management of contracts with the operational department receiving the service. Just 14% of respondent authorities said that they have a dedicated contract management team.Whatever the rights and wrongs of this approach, it also goes to explain the surveys findings that only 13% of contacting authorities have a formal procedureOne partial solution to this problem is to focus to review the successes or failures of previouswhat resources exist in the local authority onto contracts [Chart 8] when structuring re- those contracts with the highest value and the procurements; instead this process is usuallyhighest risks. Central government splits its informal (56%), occasional (28%) or rarecontracts into Gold, Silver and Bronze, so that (3%).its resources are focused on those with the Often, when procurements or re- greatest monetary or strategic value, an procurements are coming up in our council, itapproach that some thought would be will get passed on to me to look atappropriate for local and other authorities too.performance data and evidence and createThere isnt an endless pot of money to build a recommendations for the new procurement.whole army of contract managers, said one Often, there is not enough time to do thatdelegate. They're not there so we've also got thoroughly. It's too last minute, a delegate toldto be very, very focused on the segmentation the roundtable. of contracts by value and risk. We focus on More generally, (Chart 5), only 12% ofthe people who are managing the big, contracting authorities usually ask theirstrategic, high value, high risk contracts and supply chain for feedback on how theymake sure they've got all the support and perform as a client compared with 73% whoskills they need.rarely or never do so. Spend to saveThis represents a significant lost opportunity toThe management of existing contracts will be extract greater value from future contracts andunder the spotlight as many local authorities to take advantage of the additional data thatgo through reorganisation and devolution, will become available through the mandatorycombining or distributing existing agreements use of KPIs on larger contracts introduced byacross a number of new or different the Procurement Act.organisations from the ones that originally We train our contract managers as much asprocured and ran them.we can, but it's very much from the lessonsThis all adds up to a persuasive argument for learned where we can identify any issues thatpublic bodies to invest more in the nuts and are raised outside of that and then workingbolts of contract management, in the towardsavoiding those issues in futureknowledge that the investment will be repaid contracts, said a procurement manager at thewith dividends through the extraction of roundtable. greater value from public sector contracts. We find, if you look back on previous ones, itWhether contracting authorities will grasp the always helps moving forward and you leave itnettle - and whether the Procurement Act 2023 all those issues or risks or problems thatproves to be the catalyst for this change - you've noticed in the previous contracts, aremains to be seen.procurement manager told the roundtable.Derek Bedlow11"