Objectives

To deliver continued maintenance of critical transport infrastructure, Roads ACT was reliant on contracting the majority of these works. The procurement process was supported by a partner within the government, however with delays and timelines blowing out, Roads ACT wanted to ensure a fit for purpose procurement model that could achieve greater efficiency in procurements, while not compromising on probity.

To support this, Bevington Group was engaged to:

Challenges

Missed contract and procurement milestones, resulting in avoidable, and costly, short term contract extensions Unnecessary escalations for relatively simple procurements Manual document and data management Poor visibility of procurement status Procurement approaches that reflected ‘build’ rather than ‘maintain’ Unclear process accountabilities

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“Why is it so hard to get this done?”​ “We’re ultimately hurting the contracting industry that we rely on”​ “We have got no easy way to know what stage all our procurements are at”​​

Approach

Frontline service teams and management participated in several collaborative workshops to evaluate the current model, it’s opportunities, and to design a new ‘fit-for-purpose’ model and a plan for implementation.

Bevington Group’s Lean methods were used to support the engagement

Findings

Approximately a third of process effort was characterised as waste (non-value add)

The key issues found related to failure demand include:

• Manual data management and tracking
• Unnecessary consultations with legal team and escalations to leadership
• Rework of partner agency’s outputs
• Following up on status of work

Our recommendations

Six workstreams were proposed to deliver the target state

Introduce ‘fast-track’ processes Support the simple, low risk, contracts to move quickly with less red tape	Define the controls to manage the risk Ensure appropriate checks and balances are in place to manage risk at all levels	Establish ‘in-house’ procurement function Return control and visibility to where accountability lies
Redefine performance metrics To set new expectations and accountability for outcomes	System enhancements and automation Increase work tracking visibility and remove manual data management	Integrity audits and QC Embed an approach that ensures that increased productivity doesn’t increase risk

Implementation

• Supported by Bevington, the organisation quickly moved to deliver the future model
• The analysis supported the business case to reduce red tape
• The change strategy laid the plans for consultation to support the ‘bold’ move to re-establish the in-house procurement function
• The engagement of staff with the Bevington team in the planning meant the radical new process designs were supported far more than anticipated

Benefits realised

30% of capacity created The effort reduction in the future model was sufficient to fund the required internal Procurement specialist roles	New in-house function Established the new function to support a tailored and faster process

Client feedback

“Bevington team are fantastic to work with, there wasn’t anything they didn’t do well”​​

“Bevington Group are efficient and deliver quality work”​​

“The Bevington team are Professional, quickly understand our industry and what best practice looks like – industry leading”​​

Part of this work was supported by the XeP3 product (owned by Bevington and Partners Pty Ltd)