Enhancing Contract Management: Central Bedfordshire Council’s Journey Towards Improved Efficiency

Central Bedfordshire Council is improving its contract management by adopting a tiering methodology through the Contract Management Pioneer Programme, enhancing consistency, strategic alignment, and long-term value across its diverse contracts.

Central Bedfordshire is bordered by Northamptonshire to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Hertfordshire to the south and Buckinghamshire to the west. The council serves a population of 307,230 (Source: 2023 mid-year population estimates). The aggregated sum of contract values managed by Central Bedfordshire totalled £1,167m in in August 2024 with 1 in 5 contracts having a contract value over £1m (Source: Contracts Register).

Central Bedfordshire Council has a decentralised approach to contract management arrangement and joined the Contract Management Pioneer Programme (CMPP) in 2024.

Early engagement with the Council via an initial assessment workshop helped to identify and priority areas including:

• Senior Officer responsibility for the quality and sponsorship of contract management.  
• Consistent contract management frameworks and policies and the process to measure their effectiveness and share good practice.   
• Tiering of contracts by strategic value, risk and complexity. 
• Storing and recording sign offs for each stage of the contract management lifecycle. 
• Identifying capability requirements of contract managers. 
• Embedding a culture of continuous improvement in contract management. 

During a deeper discussion via a midpoint check-in in mid-2024, it was agreed that the focus of support should be on contract tiering.

The activity with Local Partnerships aimed to support the Council in its next step particularly informing on best practice and development and implementing a bespoke tiering tool The objectives of the work were to:

• Work with Waverley Council to review a suite of contracts using the CMPP tiering tool.  
• Develop a tailored scoring criteria for Central Bedfordshire Council to apply to all contracts which focused on financial, strategic fit (in line with its 2050 vision and ambition statements), contract complexity, risk and opportunity.  
• Evaluate Waverley Council’s current state and its future journey in contract management.

The Challenge:

The challenges identified at the outset of the project were as follows:

• A need to raise the internal profile and importance of contract management. 
• A need to build on the current good knowledge of the overall number of contracts awarded and their value at the point of award but a desire to address a lack of knowledge of the current/outturn value of contracts. 
• A decentralised model of contract management which meant there is a lack of consistency across the organisation, and where pockets of best practice are being carried out in a siloed fashion.  
• Capacity issues, which tended to drive contract management to be deprioritised.  
• A need to identify which contracts could be maximised further to ensure social value opportunities were realised over the long-term. 

The Solution:

Tools and approaches used to support the Council included the following:

• Production of a baselining report with RAG assessment so the Council could identify the key areas of concern and prioritise actions. 
• As an initial step to contract tiering, analysis of the Council’s Contract Register (over 530 contracts) was undertaken; scoring each contract according to agreed financial bandings.      
• Discussions and examples of a tiering methodology, which will help the Council to tier its contracts on a consistent basis and take appropriate actions in monitoring and managing those contracts. 
• Securing agreement with colleagues across multiple service areas on an agreed contract tiering criterion with associated weightings. 
• Applying a proposed contract tiering methodology to a suite of contracts across various service areas to demonstrate the effectiveness of contract tiering. 

Lessons Learned:

Key lessons learned and information sharing:

• Setting aside a few days for workshops and discussion can create consensus for future operation, using the experience of participants to shape what is best for the council and its contract management journey.

• Council-wide engagement in the design and agreement of a contract tiering methodology and weightings.

• Using the Council’s 2050 vision and ambition statements to assess how each contract contributed to the aims of objectives of its long-term strategy (strategic fit).

Local Partnerships provided bespoke support which has enabled the Council to assess and test the benefits of contract tiering based on financial, strategic fit, contract complexity, risk, and opportunity considerations.  This is helping the Council identify how to embed more robust and proportionate contract management practices to deliver better value for money and help deliver wider corporate objectives set out in our 2050 vision.

Alec Edgar, Compliance and Data Manager, Procurement Team, Central Bedfordshire Council

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