The Procurement Pie!
Anyone who knows me well, will know that I like to cook. One of my favourite things to cook is a pie. Yesterday, my summer pie was a lovely cheese and potato pie, made with camembert. The first cut inviting the melted gooey cheese to ooze out, like lava flowing from a volcano. So it got me thinking about procurement in the context of a humble cheese and potato pie and what lessons of best practice we can learn, particularly when preparing procurement documents.
First off, get all the ingredients right - The key to a good pie is to get all the ingredients right. Properly measured out and properly prepared. Pretty simple if you have a recipe. Running a procurement is the same. The recipe is the Public Contracts Regulations and all those PPNs issued by the Cabinet Office. Follow the guidance and best practice and you should be ok. Just don't overdo it! Like my pie yesterday, it wasn't quite perfect. The recipe said to boil the sliced potatoes for 2 minutes which I didn't think was long enough. So I cooked them for 5 minutes. The result? They were a bit mushy and made assembling the pie a little tricky. Procurement is very process driven and when you go off-piste there is always a risk that something might fail. Key lesson here is to follow the rules!
Secondly, assemble it properly - In the context of the pie, it kind of needs to look glorious. The wonderful thing about a pie is that it forms the centrepiece of your dinner. Positioned in the middle of the table and sliced in front of hungry guests. It's the same with procurement documents. No tenderer likes to receive a procurement pack that doesn't flow, doesn't make sense, contradicts itself, is poorly worded or lacks clarity. Putting together procurement documents is an art as much as a science. It requires logical thinking, like what order the documents should be. How cross referencing is done. It needs to take the tenderer on a journey:-
This is what we're looking for
This is what you need to do
This is how we will evaluate your tender
Like the humble pie, it needs to take centre stage on the meeting table and it needs to be near damn perfect.
Thirdly, it needs to be well baked - In this sense, no soggy bottoms or uncooked interiors. It has to be cooked all the way through. Procurement is like this too. The better the quality of the procurement documents, the better the end product. What do they say about "rubbish in, rubbish out", or variants on the word "rubbish"! What is it you actually want? No half baked (excuse the pun) solutions. Good procurement documents are those that the team invest time in to produce and not rush out to meet a deadline. They are well considered and are designed to meet the procurement objectives. Good procurement documents are well baked.
And finally, it needs to taste good - The first cut of my cheese and potato pie was glorious. A reassuring crunch as the knife broke through the laminations of the puff pastry coat and then, removing the first slice and seeing the camembert ooze out. It was perfection! For procurement documents, they need to taste good too. For the tenderer, they shouldn't have to read them and be left with a bad taste in their mouth. The procurement documents reflect the organisation issuing them. They inform a tenderer if this is an organisation that they want to work for. You can kind of understand the culture of an organisation in their written word. If the documents speak of collaboration and alliancing then this might be an organisation you want to work for. The procurement documents are effectively the organisation's opportunity to sell itself to the market. It is therefore fundamentally important that the documents give the taste of what's to come.
So there you have it. Procurement documents as seen through the lens of an aspiring pie maker! Who knew procurement documents could be so tasty!