FEATURE PERFORMANCE PROCUREMENT


GRITIT Grounds Maintenance discusses how effective tendering can give you the best of all worlds.


“If you buy cheap, you buy twice”: It’s a home truth that’s often borne out in everyday life, but while taking a faulty bargain kettle back to the shop can prove an inconvenience, cutting corners in procuring long term service contracts can have a significant and lasting impact on a business. Even so, tales of poor service and squabbles over what’s in and out of scope in years two and three of service delivery are all too common and it’s invariably true that such issues often arise from a poor procurement process.


As competitive pressures ratchet up the need to do more with less, businesses will always seek new ways to make budgets stretch further, yet buying services also has to provide businesses with the flexibility to respond to new challenges. In outdoor FM services, the extremes of hot and cold weather over the past year is a case in point.


Last winter was one of the UK’s coldest and harshest in years, creating huge demand for professional winter gritting and snow clearance services to keep sites safe and open for business. This was followed by a long, hot,


20 | TOMORROW’S FM


“A vague specification will inevitably lead to inconsistent pricing from potential service partners due to varying interpretations of service requirements.”


dry summer that provided new challenges in planning and delivering effective grounds maintenance as the grass dried out and the hedges grew more rapidly.


So, with the natural environment doing its bit to further tax the resources and budget allocated to outdoor FM services, how do you still stay within budget? More importantly, how can one build the necessary responsiveness into the procurement process to ensure you buy services that are truly fit for purpose, sufficiently flexible and that don’t create unnecessary risk downstream?


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