Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
innovation to the solution. They were therefore able to offer their serv-
ices directly to tenderers in the development of their submissions. This
approach also enabled the team to fulfi l its transparency obligations and
provide small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with the visibility
of potential openings, which they could target to assist their entry into
the supply chain.
In order to gain and retain the confi dence of stakeholders and the
executive body, an early understanding of what is being procured and
how the works are planned is essential. It is also important to maintain
that confi dence by accurately reporting the current progress of key pro-
curement activities.
Contracting strategy
At the beginning of the London 2012 procurement an early analysis of
the clustering approach and the WBS indicated the need to procure
a large number of construction and related contracts in a very short
period of time. To put this into context, the programme showed that
the ODA procurement function had to go from almost no spending to
a £1 bn buying function within a year. To satisfy complicated contract-
ing requirements, a standard approach to contracting had to be adopted
before specifi c projects could be procured. The approach taken was to
develop a contracting strategy based on a classifi cation structure, which
responded to the associated risk profi les of each project.
The formal procurement policy set out a requirement for robust but
fl exible contract arrangements that took into account the levels of risk
over the duration of the entire programme. The contracting strategy
responded to this requirement by using the New Engineering Contract,
3rd edition (NEC3) suite of contracts to formalise arrangements.
Forms of contract used in the 2012 Olympics procurement
Selecting appropriate contract forms is the major component of a con-
tracting strategy. The New Engineering Contract (NEC) was fi rst pub-
lished in 1993 and in 2005 a revised version, NEC3, was introduced.
The NEC3 suite of contracts, comprised of a number of contracts with
various options designed to meet a variety of situations and purposes,
was the preferred form of contract for construction projects on the
