WLGA Procurement Case Study:  Ardal

Ardal is a dynamic procurement partnership that unites four Welsh councils: Cardiff, Monmouthshire, Torfaen, and the Vale of Glamorgan.

What was this for?

Tackles the challenges of an under-resourced procurement workforce at a time when practice change and growing expectations requires more. Much more.

What was the change?

Procurement reform is an important tool for strengthening and supporting governance and better public sector performance; but it’s not easy.

Cardiff was leading good practice.   Particularly in responding to the Wellbeing Impact agenda.  The Ardal partner organisations recognised the lead and associated their teams directly with the people involved.

How did it go?

This connection with Cardiff was a canny move.  Procurement expertise is at a premium right now and there’s no additional funding for the procurement reforms.  Partnership allows more to be done with the people already there.

Experienced staff were able to apply lessons learned across a wider footprint and new staff could be brought on in the process. New tools and techniques for managing decarbonisation and social value which were delivering strong results in Cardiff, are now also doing so across the partnership region.

Results

Ardal’s core outputs are SEWSCAP, SEWH and SEWSTAP frameworks.  These are award winning products and are exceptional examples of collaborative procurement for large projects.  Spend through SEWSCAP recently exceeded £1 Billion.

A strengthened category team structure is allowing greater category specialism and capacity, delivering circa 350 tenders per annum.  The key performance factor is not however how many compliant tenders are produced, or how big they are; but how good they are.  These were done by people who are supported and can specialise.  Under governance with a direct stake in the outcomes.

How good?  A lot of the outcomes are not financialised, they are record only and locally managed to deliver the local proposition.  Some can however be expressed through robust financial proxies based on the Government Green Book.  For those, the social value pilot programme has secured over £10,000,000 of commitments.

These commitments are all for things that suppliers are willing to do, over and above what was specified in the contract.  It involves providing employment opportunities for long term unemployed, support for skills growth through apprenticeships and employment support, and support for a range of community, educational and environmental initiatives. A commitment means nothing without delivery, so a key part of the work is contract management and ensuring that what’s promised gets delivered.

Anything Else?

It’s supporting real change.  The benefits go wider than the immediate contract subject matter because they involve new behaviours within whole communities of provision.

A Carbon Reduction Plan for example would be applied to an entire organisation and its supply chain, not just the part that delivers the Ardal contract.

Ardal also applies a social value levy on contracts, which directly supports the users of the contract, wherever they are:

• In Bridgend, £19,000 was awarded to provide fortnightly sessions for girls to learn to dance and cheerlead. This resulted in the group entering their first cheerleading festival at the end of 2022
• In Caerphilly, £11,000 was awarded to provide weekly multi-sports sessions that enable local girls to try a range of new activities and taster sessions
• In Blaenau Gwent, £16,000 was awarded to provide transport for local girls to access existing provisions that were out of reach. These sessions have linked with the local health board to add a wellbeing element.

Each is a small local project; but these small projects add up and they directly support local delivery of national policies.