case_studies
Making procurement easier for councils and businesses
Ask a pioneering local leader why they’re not harnessing the innovation opportunities of the market to solve their locality’s service challenges and you’ll often get the response; “Procurement policy doesn’t allow it”.
That’s why Connected Places Catapult is engaged with experts and representative bodies from across the public procurement ecosystem to challenge the myths surrounding public procurement, share pioneering practice, and set out new pathways for the procurement of new solutions by the public sector.
We’re working with our partners including the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (Solace), the Public Sector Transformation Academy and the Local Government Chronicle to challenge procurement where we aim to:
Help develop well-signposted gateways that will encourage prospective suppliers with great ideas to come forward and help us all make more places that are fit for the future.
Dismantle the barriers that procurement – and how it is frequently perceived by stakeholders – poses, and to help ensure that brilliant solutions are made more accessible to the market
Encourage place leaders and their teams to rethink the role of procurement in delivering organisational objectives and to help foster changes in business processes that make that shift possible
Encourage commissioners and project teams to involve procurement specialists in problem exploration and specification, as a precursor to inviting them to pitch for contracts
Drive confident investment in procurement teams, ensuring they have the bandwidth, skills and training to use the full array of tools available to them
