SME case study: Range of centralised DDaT service contracts
Updated 5 April 2023
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Department & team name
Home Office Commercial Directorate, Digital Data and Technology (DDaT).
Contract name
Range of centralised DDaT service contracts (Devops, Software Engineering, Architecture, User Centred Design, and others).
Contract value
£40 million Devops, £80 million Software Engineering, Technical Architecture £40 million, User Centred Design £5 million (total for centralised contracts is around £200 million).
What was procured
DDaT Profession based services – a range of digital and technology services such as user research, technical architecture and software engineering.
The issue
Some of the central contracts are high value and therefore difficult for SMEs to win as they don’t have the staffing numbers to meet the need (particularly when services are ‘inside IR35’). We are also looking for thought leaders in the profession that can help Home Office recruit, coach and support more civil servants to replace supplier resources. There are SMEs that would be perfect for this requirement.
The question for the commercial lead was, how do we ensure SMEs are able to engage with these procurements.
Action taken
A large, programme engagement was held at the start of the procurements and then for each procurement we have held a clarification call. It was important to remind the market of the importance of SMEs, with the following focus:
1) Social value requirements may be focused on how they treat their supply chain / SMEs
2) If the contract spend is greater than £5 million per annum, to remind them of the transparency requirements to advertise any sub-contracts over £25,000 on Contracts Finder. This applies to any new sub-contract requirements after the contract is signed. If they already have their partners in place and include them in their proposal, then they don’t have that advertisement overhead later.
The Procurement Lead offered to share contact information for interested parties. Those suppliers who submitted their permission to share contact details were added to a partnering list, which was emailed out to all suppliers on the list and updated as more joined.
The procurement lead had developed this approach when working for BBC digital and was responsible for ensuring SMEs were supported. It hasn’t been used previously at the Home Office.
Feedback has been very positive and has resulted in partnerships that have been successful in tendering for the central contracts. A key request from suppliers is to find a way to continue the relationship support in general and not just for specific procurements – in effect a live list of suppliers interested in partnering for stated categories of service.
Outcome
This has proved successful with really positive feedback from large prime suppliers and SMEs alike. SMEs in the Home Office DDaT central contracts supply chains are visible and engaged. We expect around 30 – 40% of the services to be contracted or subcontracted to SMEs.
The Home Office Policy and Strategy team will now explore how we could apply ‘supplier introductions’ within other tendering opportunities.