The Procurement Act is a genuine improvement on what it replaced. It is clearer, more flexible and more honest about the fact that lowest price and best value have never been the same thing. Anyone who has run a public sector tender under the old regulations will recognise the relief.
But there is a persistent hope inside government that the right procurement framework will produce the right project. It will not. Procurement is a mechanism for selecting a party. It cannot compensate for a client who does not know what they are buying.
The decisions that actually determine the outcome
On every distressed scheme I have been asked to recover, the decision that caused the damage was taken before any tender was issued. A brief that had not been tested. A site that had not been properly investigated. A budget set by an aspiration rather than an estimate. A programme reverse-engineered from a committee date.
- Was the design mature enough to price? Usually not.
- Was the risk register a live document or an appendix? Usually the latter.
- Did anyone challenge the affordability envelope before it became policy? Almost never.
You cannot procure your way out of a brief that was wrong before it was written.
Where the Act genuinely helps
The transparency obligations are useful, and the ability to exclude poor performers has real teeth if authorities have the appetite to use it. My concern is that the appetite is the scarce resource, not the power.
Good procurement is the visible end of a long chain of unglamorous decisions. Legislating the visible end and leaving the chain untouched is an expensive way of feeling that something has been done.