Key legal takeaways from the national HCSA conference
It was great to see many colleagues both from the Hub and the East of England at the HCSA conference on 19-20 November. It was two days of interesting presentations and discussions followed by the gala dinner and awards to celebrate some of the stand-out procurement projects and colleagues for the last year. I was glad to not have to walk across the stage in heels in this year!
The procurement enthusiast in me was most interested in the updates from Capsticks (Mary Mundy and Edward White), Hempsons (Andrew Daly) and Andrew Taylor from the Independent PSR Review Panel. I walked away from all three sessions with some key areas to consider and new processes and policies to write.
While seen as theme across all, Andrew Daly drew a specific point ‘to get the basics of your procurement right’. Whether this is the choice of procedure, what’s drafted within your ITT or ensuring your evaluation is in line with your documents, making sure you are legally compliant and following what you have stated within your documents ensures the basis of the procurement is sound, and hopefully results in less challenges. At the Hub, we have standard documents and processes which we follow for all frameworks to ensure consistency and compliance with the regulations. We also have standard mini comp documents which can be used under all our frameworks to help contracting authorities with this as well.
Edward White highlighted the importance of knowing what information could be shared in disclosure if a case is brought to court. I think personal messages are an area people often forget could be requested – make sure you don’t write something you either would not want to come out in court or you do not feel you could defend in court. It is also important to consider this when writing evaluation comments and within the moderation meeting. Mary Munday posed ‘stress testing’ assessment summaries to ensure process has been followed. While legal firms may do this for you if you receive a challenge, it may be an area you could look at doing internally. Could someone else in your organisation who hasn’t been involved in the project review the letters and ensure that the process has been followed and the evaluation carried out correctly? While this may seem like a lot of work, it could save time with challenges later.
Andrew Taylor shared five issues the Panel have come across with PSR. The one that stuck out to me was how many issues are brought because of late changes when utilising the competitive process. This is something we see under PCR and will likely see under the Procurement Act as well. Some changes may not be able to have been foreseen and do genuinely require a change to be made; however many could be picked up with a more thorough review or peer-to-peer review before publication. Where changes are made, ensure suppliers and evaluators are all aware to ensure that bids are put in based on the new request and scored based on this. Before any changes are made, consider implications or impacts it may have on other aspects and requirements of the tender.
If you are still yet to start any above-threshold procurements under the Act and have any concerns, Procurement regulations queries or would like to discuss my take aways from the HCSA conference please do get in touch: [email protected].