Building blocks for the future
The contract, signed in December 2007, will see the rebuild or refurbishment of 16 secondary schools in the City of Leicester, with G4S managing and maintaining the buildings for a 25-year term afterwards.
Although this is the company’s first foray into the BSF programme, it is already experienced in the education sector thanks to a number of traditional contracts elsewhere, and is currently preferred bidder for FM Services on Greenwich’s BSF programme, while bidding further waves within the BSF roll out.
The BSF contracts have presented G4S with their own set of challenges, as well as their own unique advantages. The G4S Project Director Adam Doohan, explains: “The most obvious difference is the complexity of negotiating the contracts. There are more stakeholders than with a traditional contract which is simply between the local authority and the contractor. Here we have the Local Education Partnership, partners, the schools themselves, including head
teachers and governing bodies, and so on.
“This also means the bidding process is a much longer, and consequently more expensive, one. In Leicester, for example, Preferred Bidder was awarded in April 2006 with Financial Close reached some 89 weeks later December 2007, excluding the time from OJEU notice. It also cost several million pounds, and this could be a barrier to smaller companies entering the bidding process. It’s a massive outlay with no guarantee of a return.”
The efforts to use a standard form contract are good in part, but become difficult when working through local issues. Doohan is hopeful that this can be ironed out as the programme rolls out, and is keen for the lessons learned on the early contracts to be shared: “There are about 60 BSF schools up and running so far,” he says, “in a programme of 3,500 scheduled for improvements under the programme. That is enough to learn some vital lessons, which will assist everyone going forward. This is a new way of procurement for local authorities, so a lot is being paid in consultancy fees to provide additional support. It would be greatly beneficial for those councils and LEPs who have the experience to share the lessons and improve the efficiency of the programme down the line.”
One key difference between BSF contracts and traditional ones is the input an FM contractor has right from the design stage of the new or refurbished facility. This can be a huge advantage compared to arriving in an existing school and making do with the existing facilities. Doohan explains: “We place great importance on liaising with our construction partners to ensure that the building design will meet the requirements of our service teams. Our professional design liaison teams are involved in the process from the outset, and monitor compliance of the agreed design throughout the bidding, contract negotiation and construction phases. This allows us to make sure we can service the facilities in terms of the right materials, building fabric, location of service facilities and so on.
“We’re no longer just looking at a janitor’s cupboard at the end of the corridor. We’re using quite sophisticated systems and machinery, and we need to be sure we have access for repair or removal, access to roofs, and that everything is in place from a health and safety perspective. We even issue a complete design guide right at the outset, as the whole facilities maintenance sector is a lot more complex than it once was.”
Of course, the current economic situation has taken its toll across the board, and Doohan says he’s noted an increased desire to earmark funding and get projects underway before next year’s general election, after which public sector spending cuts are widely expected.
Nonetheless, BSF represents an attractive proposition to would-be and existing contractors as it is already heavily committed, and thus seen as a strong income stream. He adds: “We already have four schools on the Leicester programme up and running, with a further two in design. The priority is to continue to drive the programme on the remaining 10 schools in the Leicester City portfolio.
The company designs and delivers integrated FM services to clients utilising a combination of the skills and competencies contained within the business, and specialist skills through external business partnerships where beneficial.
It provides a fully managed FM service and competent people on the ground to support customers in delivering their core business activities effectively. G4S Integrated Services deploys the skills and processes to maintain the facility to ensure their whole life operability, including preventative and reactive maintenance regimes and provision of soft FM services, co-ordinated through a ‘one stop shop’ helpdesk system for receipt, management and reporting of tasks.
As a leader in the provision of integrated FM services that have been outsourced, G4S also has extensive experience of the transfer of staff under TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings, Protection of Employment) regulations in the UK, Agenda for Change, and working with trade unions. Its employment ethos is founded on a philosophy of fairness, career development, promotion from within on merit wherever possible, respect for human rights, and the safety of employees.
G4S works in both the public and private sectors, and as such it has been keenly involved with the delivery of PFI and PPP programmes, using private finance and service providers in partnership with the public sector. It has been a pioneer of both the PFI and PPP models, allowing Government to share investment, risk and responsibility amongst a number of partners. The underlying logic remains that both the public and the private sector have unique characteristics that provide them with advantages in specific aspects of service and project delivery. The company also undertakes Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) management functions within our own PFI contracts and for third parties including contract compliance, financial and general management services and asset management and lifecycle.
