Maintenance procurement

Maintenance procurement

Keywords Compulsory competitive tendering, Maintenance

Organisations vary considerably in the way they procure maintenance, according to a report issued today by BMI*.

The public sector has been heavily influenced by the Government's attempts to introduce competition. Prior to this,direct labour organisations were the preferred method of carrying out maintenance by most public sector organisations. This has disappeared completely from the local authority sector where competitive tendering was made compulsory. Of the local authority respondents, 98 per cent used measured term contracts to procure their day-to-day maintenance (see Figure 3).

Figure 3.Procurement route: day-to-day maintenance

At the other extreme, 72 per cent of health authority and 53 per cent of university work is still carried out by directly employed labour.

In the private sector there was a much more mixed response with measured term and lump sum contracts accounting for most of the work.

*BMI Special Report 270 ­ Review of Maintenance Procurement Practice, price £30.00.