Kent Fire and Rescue Service
Commercial and Procurement Strategy 2021 to 2025

Continue to develop our ability to articulate our business need in advance of designing a specification to ensure the scope of the work is established*

Continue to ensure all potential hidden costs are identified and factored into the pricing model to give full transparency of costs throughout the life of the contract

Continue to support contract managers to effectively manage contracts to minimise change control and scope creep

Continue to improve the articulation of our requirements, coupled with evaluation criteria that considers the total cost of ownership of products and cost of receiving services*

Introduce long-term contracts with inbuilt resilience and risk sharing, wherever appropriate, as ways of achieving efficiency and effectiveness*

Ensure all new contracts include provisions requiring the contractor to endeavour to identify and implement cost saving measures*

Support contract managers of existing contracts to review the performance of suppliers and any changes they make to prices

Seek feedback from service users, communities and providers in order to review the effectiveness of the commissioning process in meeting local needs and adjust them  accordingly*

Reduce the total spend (>£10k) that occurs without the support of the Commercial and Procurement team to zero by 2025

Facilitate the involvement of the broadest range of suppliers, including considering sub-contracting and consortia building, where appropriate

Continue to ensure our assessment of needs is fully understood, through engagement with all relevant end-users as part of the design and delivery of requirements*

Continue to include monitoring requirements within the contract terms and conditions to ensure information required to validate benefits is accessible from the supplier

Continue to ensure procurement activity is formally commissioned, with sign-off by the budget manager

Continue to encourage and facilitate pre-market engagement in advance of ‘go-live’ of new contracting opportunities*

Conduct annual engagement with relevant sectors for each category to give clarity of the direction of our business and to enable supplier feedback*

Continue to develop category plans which support the delivery of this strategy by documenting a pipeline of future activity

Continue to support appropriate commercial qualifications for all in the procurement team

Support five days of specialised professional development per year for each member of the team as required by Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply