Feature ANNETTE GEVAERT
COLLABORATIVE ENGAGEMENT TRANSFORMS RAIL INDUSTRY PROCUREMENT
Procurement in the rail industry must change swiftly and decisively if it is to deliver the efficiencies demanded by government and rail users.
T Words: Annette Gevaert
Director of Rail & Transport Achilles
www.achilles.com
he government’s recent announcement that it is to invest £9bn to improve the UK’s rail infrastructure has been well received by the industry. However, the initiative comes with conditions attached. Last year’s review of the sector by Sir Roy McNulty identified ten main barriers to efficiency and the government now calls for a 30 per cent improvement in efficiency levels across the industry.
Making savings of this magnitude requires the rail industry to work far more collaboratively and much smarter. In procurement, an initiative is underway to reshape the way buyers and suppliers work on pre-qualification and tendering processes. The governance for the industry’s supplier qualification scheme, Link-up, changed one year ago to make it accessible to the whole industry on a collaborative basis – creating a scheme that is ‘by the industry, for the industry’.
Over the last twelve months decisions have been made to transform the way suppliers are pre-qualified and how audit protocols for the industry are formulated.
46 RailCONNECT
At the Link-up Annual General Meeting in July, the Steering Group came up for re-election. The Steering Group chair, Richard Sharp of J Murphy & Sons, summarised the objectives that had been set and the results that had been achieved over his chairmanship. Some of the key objectives had been to: raise standards in supply chain performance; provide a forum to share experiences and procurement best practice; and to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of the Link-up scheme.
Over the last twelve months decisions have been made to transform the way suppliers are pre-qualified and how audit protocols for the industry are formulated. In addition, the scope of the new platform for Link-up was defined and the ‘go-live’ timeline established.
The next twelve months will be devoted to implementing and realising the transformation, with a ‘go-live’ for the new platform set for March/April 2013. Through the streamlining and significant shortening of the pre- qualification questionnaire it will be far easier for suppliers to provide and update information. For the buyers, a more flexible search facility will be introduced and a new dynamic way of requesting additional information from selected suppliers will become available. A revised pricing model will cater for SMEs and offer a reduced entry level fee.
The focus going forward will be on the implementation of the new version of Link-
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