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CJS Discussion Board - projects |
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You are here> Info > Main Board> Projects & Funding |
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Projects and Funding - the problems of.... We feel these are all threads along similar lines and have grouped them all together here.
Best Value or Cheapest?I want to hear opinions on the policy of national parks accepting the lowest bids for contracts. I've got a footpath contractor working for me at the minute on a day rate (more than mine incidentally) he is probably the best in the region at the moment and is keen to keep working, however I've only got about 1 week's work for this guy and then he's going out of the business, his problem is quite simply that he wants a realistic price for his work but as most of his work comes from a national park he is consistently undercut on jobs sometimes by up to 50%. The contractor who usually gets the job has little experience by comparison and on seeing his work this is blatantly obvious. Is it not time that organisations should be looking at what is best value and not what is cheapest? we run the risk of losing talented and experienced teams and putting up with shoddy work for the sake of "savings" we had a similar situation with walling a few years back with new guys putting up walls for as little as £8 a yard so people took them on, the walls didn't last long but by then any decent wallers had gone bust or moved on, are we going the same way with footpaths? Details supplied. (ref: BVC) Replies:► Hear hear, you wouldn't ask a builder to build you a house at a low low price, knowing it would fall down a year later or a month later in the case of footpath work. Details supplied. (Ref: BVC-R1)
► TY from Sussex adds: I find it so odd that as local authorities we have to go with the cheapest option. I know of countless contractors who all work in an environmentally sensitive manner simply because they are also passionate for the great outdoors. Not only do they understand why the work is being done, but they also report any interesting or rare sightings. Unfortunately the majority of these contractors cannot afford to lower their prices and compete with the bigger boys, despite them giving a far more effective service (and only slight differences in price). My favourite quote once over heard from one of our (past) large contractor companies went along the lines of " I can't empty the bins, they're full"!!! Need I add anything more?! (ref: BVC-R2)
► On 12/7/04 What a subject! Thought I would simply relay my experience. Graduated in Biology / Geography in 1992 from [large UK city] with 6 others (none of whom now work in the conservation field, as we all intended to), then over 2 years voluntary work with 2 BTCV offices and 2 Wildlife Trusts. 100+ applications and a handful of interviews, no result. Started my own business doing practical conservation management work, struggled due to Local Authority cheapest quote, saw embarrassingly bad work by cowboy contractors on my patch. Then gave up business to take on a 3 year EU project involving conservation, forestry, rural regeneration, etc. Worked on developing follow-up projects for the next 2 years: Business Plans, Objective 2 bids, etc. Became sooo disillusioned over these 5 years! The first 3 years by simply working in a Local Authority environment, after running my own business! Don't they know it is taxpayers' money!!! The wastage and inefficiency was beyond belief. Then 2 years working with Government agencies to get projects together. It was like "Come back Local Authorities, all is forgiven". The distance from the 'real world' was staggering!! Unwieldy organisations guided by short term political impact, rather than long term results on the ground. I had a project expression of interest given a high grade and told to fast track it through. Much hard work later and the application went in. Then nothing, staff changed, moved, got shuffled, no-one even knew anything about it!!! It disappeared. My short term contract ended and the £1,000s invested in my several months of hard work came to nothing. It is alleged that the bid was squashed politically by a similar bid, but put in by a larger Local Authority. Ours was supported, reluctantly, by a small LA, but more importantly was 'bottom up', had local businesses as partners who would have had majority control of the project! Details supplied. (Ref: BVC-R3).
► On 30/8/05 From SF in Wales: With reference to the comments that the contractors are on a higher rate of pay. It is necessary to charge enough to enable one to stay in business, that is to say that there are times when there is no work and also to cover the time spent doing paper work and site visits. I think that anyone who thinks that a contractors day is over at 4.30pm is very much mistaken. Generally we then have to go to the office and sort out contracts, to which the specifications are often written by people with very little practical skills or they are unrealistic about the complexity of the job. there are other things that due to the competitive market do not get included in the price, such as insurances and the time spent sourcing materials, paye is another issue that is not taken into account when looking at the price charged by the "contractor". As a contractor who specialises in works on SSSI etc, I suggest that the best value for money is the only option. However, this does not mean lots at a cheap price, we offer a service which uses quality products. A simple thing, like 4'nails, there are cheaper ones on the market, but what do you want? cheap or something that does the job? at the end of the day you get what you pay for and yes many good workmen go else where, as I myself am considering, shame really cos I got all the right qualifications for the job. buck up your ideas Mr warden or should I say reserve manager. (Ref: BVC-R4)
► On 4/10/05 LS from Bournemouth replies: It is unwise to pay too much, but it is unwise to pay too little. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing you bought it to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot. It can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder its as well to add something for the risk you run. And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better. (Ref: BVC-R5)
► On 18/10/05 SH from Cornwall says: One answer is to improve the specification for the work. If you let a tender with a thorough specification and clearly defined quality standard, the prices returned will be much closer together. This needs to be followed up with closer contract supervision and a refusal to accept any deviation from specification. Sloppy specifications and poor contract supervision leads to sloppy work on the ground, and it is the fault of the countryside manager not the contractor. (Ref: BVC-R6)
► Also on 18/10/05 TE from the Pennines replies with: Best Value does not mean the cheapest. Check your specifications/clarify the standards and results. Monitor and enforce them. You have to be hard if your nominated contractor is not coming up with the goods. Talk to the better contractor to see where they are going wrong in comparison with the successful. Your responsibility is to get the job done to the standard you require. That may expose the true cost to your own employer and the inadequate contractor. Keep a tally on the time you have to put into the contract. Monitor the suitability of the work. If it starts to break down unreasonably go back. Check on the level of health and safety, affect on the surrounding environment, the green credentials of the company, the way the staff interact with the public your staff etc. Hope you get the idea now. Draw up a table of added value benefits and use it against all your contractors and even dare I say it! volunteers. Good Luck. (Ref: BVC-R7)
Similar but slight variation: New Topic on 14/8/05. Pay, conditions, health & safety and spare a thought for the poor contractor.GM, Sussex says: I'm a life long environmentalist and enthusiast. I operate a small company that specialises in working on sensitive sites in the south-east of England. That's part of the problem. I understand average wages here to be over £20k per annum. House prices and other costs reflect this. We have some incredibly valuable habitats - chalk grassland, the highest percentage of ancient woodland cover in the UK and some excellent lowland heath to preserve, enhance and maintain. We also have many small fields, ancient shaws and hedgerows and other semi natural corridors linking in with the natural and semi-natural environment. We care - Local Authorities and other environmental bodies purport to care. Why then do I and my colleagues have to suffer from patchy and low income - we struggle to make over £10k per head per annum? It seems to me that to "compete" (aka as cutting your throat) in the countryside you are required to comply with all the H&S and employment conditions imposed by Authorities and other bodies (well meaningly but confirming the current obsession with stating the b*****g obvious) whilst reaping none of the rewards. We have recently been severely undercut by competitors on rights of way clearance work. These contractors simply cannot be complying with all the statutory requirements laid down by the Local Authority in question for the price quoted. When it comes to accepting the cheapest quote how many blind eyes are being turned? (ref: CTR)
NC, Yorks says: Pity the poor Project Officers.As a Grumpy Old Man (fully qualified) I can remember 'way back to the days of safe, secure, full-time, permanent jobs which incorporated new ideas as they came along. Now we have moved to the other extreme and have to apply for insecure, short-term, stressful, fixed-term contract jobs, created in response to the latest 'novel new initiative' of whichever government is in power. These 'Project Officer' jobs are totally dependent on inefficient and massively bureaucratic multi-funding from an ill-assorted Steering Group of organisations (most of whom are themselves government funded). Some of these are more interested than others, resulting in most of the poor Project Officers' time being diverted into re-inventing the wheel, shuffling paper, providing sight of every original invoice to each of 6 or more funding organisations before any supplier can be paid, creative writing of 'Business Plans', producing 'Reports' at any funder's whim, random-period accounting for each different funder and endless, endless meetings, each and every one of which has to be prepared for, travelled to, attended, minuted, travelled home from and then 'Reported' on – while at the same time scrabbling around frantically trying to locate and secure more match funding for future years (whilst at the same time looking for a new job / home / mortgage / kids' schools in case one funder fails to deliver at the last moment and the whole Project dies or goes bust) – and NOT actually being able to concentrate on managing the original Project! Or is it just me? (Ref: PO)
► NH, Newcastle says: I can't help but be in agreement with NC over the stresses and strains placed on project officers. Having jumped the fence from a well paid job (yes they do exist) with a government conservation body, leaving behind the pension, security and other benefits to once again become a Project Officer, I've had a whole host of thoughts on the life and times of PO's and others in a similar boat - there are a great many of us! I currently have a Steering Group of 8 public and private sector organisations (soon to be widened to 14) and have funding contributions from a further 7 who aren't represented - sourcing the logos for publicity is a week's work in itself! Whilst the admin burden of report writing, claiming funding and grants, attending meetings, etc... is a fact of life in any organisation which draws on a disparate range of public funders for its activities, what gets me is NC's point about re-inventing the wheel. Again. And again. And again. The coming of age of the internet has helped to some extent - you can always find a reference to something you're looking for (although 99.9% is utterly useless), but the fundamental problem to my mind is that someone, somewhere has done what I'm doing at least once before - I just don't know about it! That means I have to start from pretty much scratch to formulate a project and how it's going to do what it's going to do. The big agencies help to a certain extent, but I know from experience that communication from one regional office to another, or even within the same unit with a national remit, is not what it should be. The number of red squirrel projects, to take an example, must be in the several dozen by now, so what's being done to encourage co-operation and information sharing between them? The same could be said of any project - whether it's controlling Japanese Knotweed, reclaiming a lead mine or setting up a wildlife warden project. The effective sharing of all this information would do an awful lot to make my (and other project officers') life a lot easier. I'm not sure that there's a solution to the paper shuffling tho'... Anyone else got any thoughts? (ref: PO-R1)
► Addition on 5/5/04 - Since it has been suggested as a new topic, I'll have a go. Having applied for several in the past few years, my advice is: 1. Start small, get used to the systems for applying. 2. Go for the established ones first, e.g. Woodland Grant Scheme, whatever replaces Countryside Stewardship, Landfill Tax Credits etc. 3. Look around for the different grants. There are lots of them and some are under-subscribed (Internet is helpful here: think laterally, i.e. organisations as well as grant types). 4. Don't be shy, local (bigger) industries like positive P.R., contact them politely and you could well get your 10% "match-funding" in exchange for some words of gratitude and a picture in the press. 5. If you work for a Local Authority - like I do - and some of the grants are unavailable to you, get friendly with your local Wildlife Trust (who often can apply) who will probably be happy to help if you've done your homework and have a clear idea of what you want to do, when etc. There are other organisations doing a similar job to the Trusts, so look at them too. Again, be polite and prepared to scratch their backs in return (all good experience!). 6. The alternative to the above is setting up "Friends of" groups, but these are a lot of work and you'll need a bank account. Not so easy as applying under the auspices of a partner organisation. Hope this is of interest. Details supplied. (Ref: PO-R2)
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