Training in Procurement Partnership (TIPP's) - Introduction

The Challenge

With a drive for greater levels of efficiency and budgetary savings across the public sector, there is a tendency to consider amalgamating contracts between a number of contracting organisations. This amalgamation consolidates the buying power of these organisations in order to reduce the prices paid for goods and services. However, specific procurement legislation requires that these larger contracts follow open and transparent tender processes with all interested suppliers, irrespective of their geographical location, having an equal opportunity to tender. It is recognised that some of these tendering procedures can appear rather complex and daunting for the smaller supplier. Hence, Procurement Lincolnshire has worked with a number of partner organisations in order to demystify these procurement processes and to support the smaller and local supplier in responding to these opportunities.

The Partners

The public procurement community in Lincolnshire (Procurement Lincolnshire, University of Lincoln, Lincolnshire Fire & Rescue and others) has joined forces with Economic Development colleagues from the eight local authorities in order to deliver a programme aimed at building the tendering capabilities of local and smaller businesses. This programme has been informed by establishing a working group involving the local business community through the participation of Lincolnshire Chamber of Commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses and others who have contributed their expertise. The project is known as the TIPP’s (or Training In Procurement Partnership) programme.

The Solution

The TIPP’s programme has resulted in a series of training and awareness raising events which aim to equip smaller and local suppliers with the skills necessary to be better placed to respond to public sector contracting opportunities. Whilst tender processes vary from one public contracting authority to another, the programme focuses on the common elements of the process so that suppliers can potentially improve their success rates when tendering for work, not just within Lincolnshire, but regionally and nationally.
 
The main training itself, which is free, takes place in a self contained half day format and takes suppliers through the stages of the tendering process from start to finish. An indicative list of the areas covered in the training are as follows:

1. An introduction to public procurement
2. Advertising opportunities
3. How to complete Pre-Qualification Questionnaires and Invitation to Tenders
4. Top tips to winning public sector business

These events have been extremely successful having been attended by over 1300 people representing many hundreds of local and smaller businesses over the last four years. The programme of training is supplemented by an annual Meet The Buyer event where suppliers can network with public sector purchasers from across the region.

A more detailed report on the programme - Selling to the Public Sector, is attached in the downloads tab on this page.

If you are interested in attending one of our training events please review our events page.