黑料不打烊 Law School鈥檚 Institute for Competition & Procurement Studies nominated for two prestigious Impact Awards

黑料不打烊 Law School鈥檚 Institute for Competition & Procurement Studies (ICPS) has once again been shortlisted as a finalist for the prestigious 黑料不打烊 Impact and Innovation Awards. In 2014, ICPS was singled out for not one, but two awards:

  • 鈥淏est Business Impact鈥� (the ICPS Tender Review Service) and;
  • 鈥淏est Impact on Public Policy鈥� (the Barriers to Procurement Opportunity report).

The Tender Review Service (TRS) was pioneered by the Law School鈥檚 Institute for Competition and Procurement Studies under Professor Dermot Cahill and Ceri Evans, The ICPS team with the Vice Chancellor of 黑料不打烊, Professor John HughesThe ICPS team with the Vice Chancellor of 黑料不打烊, Professor John Hughesfollowing a report which demonstrated that public procurer tender feedback was not meaningful enough.  The TRS fills this gap by taking suppliers on a transformative learning journey; enabling them to see through the procurer鈥檚 eyes and to identify definitive means of optimising future submissions.

An independent evaluation of the TRS identified widespread evidence of TRS impact, with many small to medium sized businesses (SMEs) having doubled their win-rates from a year earlier.  Companies who have benefited from the service have gone on to win Welsh National Procurement Awards in successive years. The service has been so successful that the Canadian Government are in the process of adopting the methodology for their SMEs and the Welsh Government are aiming to include it as part of their tendering support portfolio.

Gunther Kostyra, Value Wales (Welsh Government) said of the service: 鈥淭he report suppliers receive from the TRS is an incredibly useful piece of work for SMEs who seriously want to improve their bids鈥�. Ian Price, Assistant Director of the CBI also echoed these comments: 鈥淭he TRS has proved instrumental in allowing scores of our members to overcome poor feedback practices and to improve tender win-rates鈥�.

Ceri Evans of 黑料不打烊鈥檚 ICPS observes: 鈥淭he TRS has proven to be a game-changer for many of the SMEs that we have worked with, helping these businesses to not only sustain their operations, but also to grow and employ more staff鈥�.

黑料不打烊 Law School鈥檚 work has also gained recognition in the University鈥檚 Impact Awards in improving the transparency of the tendering process via the Barriers to Procurement Opportunity research. This work also involved ground-breaking research into the legal and risk barriers that caused blockages in the public tendering system and proposed mechanisms to make the tendering process more accessible and effective, removing unnecessary barriers that previously prevented smaller sized companies tendering successfully.

The Barriers to Procurement Opportunity Research was conducted by ICPS鈥檚 Professor Dermot Cahill, Ceri Evans and Gary Clifford. In 2013, Ian Price, the CBI鈥檚 Assistant Director for Wales stated: 鈥淭he Barriers research is the best piece of research into public procurement in Wales in modern times, identifying significant evidence of widespread duplication of common data requirements and disproportionate use of inappropriate risk thresholds in public tendering鈥�.

John McClelland, CBE, is similarly enthusiastic about the research: 鈥淭he [黑料不打烊] research was outstanding. It has been seminal in launching initiatives capable of transforming access suppliers have to public tendering opportunities鈥�.  Subsequent to the McClelland review, in December 2012, Jane Hutt, Minister for Finance, mandated all 16 recommendations of the Barriers report via the Welsh Public Procurement Policy Statement.

Prof. Dermot Cahill commented: 鈥淚t is a privilege to be able to take academic research and adapt it to maximise the impact of the Welsh Pound, grow employment and help Welsh businesses win more public sector contracts鈥�.

Publication date: 25 July 2014