| Workstreams | Property Construction |
| Funding Detail | £48k, SWCoE Funding £18k Gloucestershire CC funding (underwritten by SWCoE) |
| Chief Executive Champion | Phillip Norrey (Devon County Councl) |
| Team Leader | Andrew Jarvis (Gloucestershire County Council) |
| Project Manager | Tony Gale (Devon County Council) |
Project Objectives and Scope
The principal objective of this project is to identify efficiency gains for SW local authorities with BSF One School Pathfinder projects through collaborative working.
It is widely recognised that the approval of particularly large projects (more than £20m for each authority), whilst providing major benefits to the authority, imposes great demands on the capabilities and capacity within each authority. This is exacerbated by the tight timescales and budgets imposed as conditions of the approvals.
There are now 10 first-tier authorities in the Region with One School Pathfinder Projects in Waves 1 and 2. The project aims to identify topics for potential for collaboration (e.g. design standards, standard room layouts, joint procurement) and to support activities which will maximise efficiency gains. In doing so, we intend to work with Government departments and agencies (including DfES and OGC) to complement their work in such areas.
Anticipated gains from the project
Design Standards / Standard Room Layouts : If one authority takes responsibility for developing detailed specifications and designs for a construction component, or a Standard Room Layout, as a definitive example in return for financial support, all authorities in the programme can save money by using this rather than developing their own versions. This might apply to several components. We anticipate that an investment of £28k could generate benefits totalling over £300k over the ten projects.
NOTE : DfES has already started a programme covering 8 or 9 components, but would be interested in working with us on other elements.
Joint Procurement : whilst the main construction contracts will be let individually by each authority, there are opportunities for collaboration on the procurement of specialist items such as all-terrain pitches, audience seating etc. – we are exploring options for e-procurement along with OGC, who are also active in procurement for the BSF programme. An investment of £18k could generate savings of up to £750k.
See document “0040 PID construction BSF pathfinder v1.2 17oct06.xls” for further details about costs and benefits, including assumptions and calculations (available from SWCoE).
Wider implications and anticipated gains if it were successfully rolled out
This is already structured as a regional programme with the benefits of consistency and reduced duplication of approach. This programme also informs the work of the national Construction Workstream.
