微密圈

David Mosey must rank among the most infectiously positive people in the construction industry. Even on an icy, grey day in January, the King鈥檚 College London professor of law beams with optimism.

Part of this might be because he is about to jet off to Oman, where bleak midwinter temperatures are currently hitting around 25掳C. Mosey has been going to the country for more than 30 years, having once headed up a regional office there for law firm Trowers & Hamlins. It has not always been without incident: 鈥淲henever I went to the Middle East, a war started,鈥� he says. Thankfully, at the time of writing, the ceasefire in Gaza is just about holding.

But it would be fair to say that the most likely source of Mosey鈥檚 positivity is the recent success of his initiative to reform how public sector bodies procure construction work. 微密圈 last spoke to Mosey in early 2022, a month after the publication of his landmark report, Constructing the Gold Standard. It has since become something of a core text in the procurement world, helping to sweep away wasteful practices by making public sector frameworks more efficient, reducing costs for both clients and providers. 

Enthusiastically adopted by the then Conservative government, it has been bolstered by a verification scheme for framework providers, launched in late 2023 and designed by industry best practice group Constructing Excellence. So far, five organisations have been rated 鈥淕old Standard鈥� 鈥� the Crown Commercial Service, Scape, Place for People, Communities and Housing Investment Consortium (CHIC) and LHC.

More are set to follow this year, including the Ministry of Justice, which has been a leader in the field of progressive procurement with its alliancing contracts for its 拢1bn prisons programme. 

This is important progress, and it is just the beginning, although Mosey admits to being impatient to see more major providers added to the list. 鈥淧rogress will never go quickly enough for David,鈥� says head of Constructing Excellence Alison Nicholl, who has played a leading role in the creation of the verification scheme.

To explain what all of this means, it is worth taking a step back to Mosey鈥檚 original report and what it set out to do. Published in December 2021, it was part of a phase of government-backed research into addressing systemic issues in the built environment which included the Construction Playbook, a set of best-practice guidance for making construction firms more efficient.

The 24 recommendations in Constructing the Gold Standard sought to implement the Construction Playbook, addressing an array of shortcomings in how public sector frameworks in the UK are used, from misleading speculative values to a lack of collaboration and unrealistic expectations of supplier capacity.

For too long, Mosey says, the industry has 鈥渉ated frameworks because they felt they invested a fortune in bidding them and weren鈥檛 getting the progress, the workflow, the opportunities to participate that they expected鈥�. Average bid costs for contractors have been around 拢247,000 per framework, and around 拢130,000 for consultants.

Yet the pipeline of work estimated by framework providers would often not materialise, and suppliers were stuck with competing for lowest cost purchasing approaches from clients for a lower than expected number of jobs. 

Were framework providers really just plucking figures out of the air when estimating their lifetime spend? 鈥淵ou really get the impression they were,鈥� admits Mosey.

The roughly 2,000 active public sector frameworks had a combined value far larger than the entire public sector construction throughput of this country. 鈥淪o someone was exaggerating,鈥� he adds.