Norfolk: Partnerships generate innovation through

No one within the partnership would argue that they got it exactly right from the start. And in April next year, when Norfolk will award new contracts, there will be considerable changes, because the council has five years' experience to reflect on its next move.

Tim Byles, Norfolk's chief executive, says the partnership stands as a tested model in what he calls the council's 'tool kit' of procurement options. The authority will most likely use a similar approach on the upcoming packages of secondary school refurbishments.

For the transport and planning partnership, it's time to move on. "This project has come to its natural end in terms of what it can deliver in improvements," says David Sterry, managing director of May Gurney, the council's partner on the contracting side. "The first one acts as a stepping stone to the second. The second can deliver a bigger programme and get more efficiencies."

One important lesson Norfolk has learnt is how difficult it is to change. "It's a very slow process," says Sam Ralph, deputy director of planning and transportation. "It is happening but it takes a longer time than you would reasonably expect."

Ralph has been in the highway engineering game for 40 years and with Norfolk County Council for 29 years. In the early '90s the department had been split into client and contractor-type roles and Ralph could see the skills base slipping away. He was keen to try something different. "We believed very strongly in the private sector but also in the public sector. It was not a cop out, it was a genuine belief that we should maximise the best of both public and private."

Although senior managers from contractor May Gurney and from consultant Mott MacDonald all sit together on a partnering board, Norfolk set up two quite different arrangements with the firms.

A growing concern
May Gurney started the partnership by installing three managers to work alongside the council's DLO and find ways of doing things differently. For May Gurney to benefit, explains Sterry, its share of the savings had to pay for the three managers' salaries plus a profit.

Further into the agreement, site staff have been added and paid on a contract or hourly rate depending on the job. The maintenance spend has grown from £15m to around £23m. At first, says Sterry, the contractor's team and the council's DLO worked separately to allow benchmarking, but now there is some mixing.

Mott MacDonald, which set up an office in Norwich for the council contract, started with 12 staff. Now there are 50. Unlike the contractor's agreement, the consultant's does not include any incentives for improvement; they are paid a pre-agreed rate. The new set-up is likely to remedy this.

The partnership approach has worked for Norfolk. The successes, says Byles, are two-fold – achieving savings and cranking up capacity without adding to the core workforce.

Perhaps the most obvious demonstration of the partnership's success is that when the council secured a 150% increase in its transport funding for 2001/2, the team coped. To be able to maximise government funding is a real achievement, says Ralph.

Part of Mott MacDonald's contribution to this was to introduce programme management techniques. Ensuring, for example, that there was always a back-up project waiting in the wings, if another should be slowed down or stopped.

Sterry sees May Gurney's main contribution in integrating design and construction to improve buildability, thereby increasing productivity and decreasing delays. The contractor also helped to bring in more framework contracts to reduce repeated letting of small contracts for things like machine servicing and white lining.

What are the benefits to the private sector companies? Sterry values different perspective and the insight he has gained into the workings and pressures of the public sector.

The things which drive a council differ in many ways from those of the private sector, says Sterry. Local authorities are dealing with the end customer, the public, and with local members, and things are sometimes not quite as straightforward as private sector firms anticipate. Mott MacDonald has noted that its experiences at Norfolk have helped it win work with other local authorities.

Gains across the board
The new partnership agreement should bring further gains all round. It is likely to be 10 years rather than five, subject to performance checks. And it will be wider-ranging to encompass bigger projects, says Byles. The chief executive will also be looking for the partnership model to benefit colleagues in other local authorities.

Ralph is excited about the possibilities that a long-term relationship could bring. "I think the highway maintenance industry has lacked genuine innovation. The industry hasn't really moved on compared to other industries and I think there is tremendous scope for improvement."

And Byles is certain that Norfolk will be aiming to employ the model for building projects: "We are looking at longer-range relationships with suppliers so we can be clear about design and construction efficiencies, as well as achieving higher standards of health and safety."

The school programme is one example. In the east of the county 80 are being upgraded under a PFI project. But Byles thinks long-term partnering could be the answer for the remainder of the Norfolk's 540 secondary schools.