Even the title of its initiative, "Project Jaguar", is a reference to Sir John Egan, who was chief executive of Jaguar. The new procurement strategy is based on principles outlined last year in his Rethinking Construction report.
The move is further evidence that momentum is still building behind the Egan proposals; BT's move follows the Ministry of Defence's embracing of Egan principles, based on the more efficient use of the supply chain and the elimination of waste.
The first details of the new regime are contained in BT's advertisement in this issue of Building (see tenders, page 90). It calls for firms to prequalify to take over the running and maintenance of its 8000-building estate.
The work is likely to be let in one, two or three packages. Amec and Mansell, neither of which would comment on Project Jaguar, are among the major contractors that have had meetings with BT about winning one or more of the packages.
Les Clarke, general manager of BT's property management arm FM Solutions, said that his outfit would be happy to negotiate with bidders over the form and length of contracts, but several principles are of overriding importance.
Among these are:
- relationships based on trust
- benchmarked prices that fall year on year
- clearly agreed output service levels that improve year on year
- simplified performance measurement criteria and contracts.
"We really are at the forefront of the 'wind of change' that is blowing through this sector of the economy [construction]. It presents us with a significant opportunity to make a real bottom-line difference for BT and improve the quality of service we provide to everyone in the company." Clarke envisages firms prequalifying within two months and then BT working with shortlisted bidders to help them draw up proposals by October or November. BT aims to select the winning contractor or contractors by 1 January, although it may wait until as late as March.
Clarke's presentation continues: "Implementation would then undoubtedly be on a progressive basis in order to establish the right levels of confidence and trust in the new arrangements.
"Progressively we would therefore be able to free up people from roles which would become superfluous in that new contracting paradigm.
"We would envisage that as a minimum we will continue to need a professional team to manage our relationship with our customers and act as an 'intelligent customer' for our suppliers." Clarke says BT will hold talks with unions on redeployment and redundancy where appropriate.
BT's estate is spread across the UK and includes 300 office buildings varying from high-tech computer centres to remote unmanned exchanges.
Clarke said he believed that traditional construction procurement was unsatisfactory for the following reasons:
- the supply chain had become fragmented and took no account of whole-life costings
- BT had formed adversarial relationships with its suppliers
- it had also developed on obsession with competitive tendering, and had fallen into the trap of awarding work on the basis of "lowest price at any cost"
- it was guilty of "overspecification", exercising overly detailed control over its suppliers, which discouraged them from innovating.
