01 March 2006 | Rebecca Ellinor

Public sector buyers will be able to forecast the quality of supplier relationships using a "toolkit" developed by a branch of the MoD.

Building Collaboration - a toolkit based on experience was produced by management consultancy ITS and Defence Estates (DE).

The toolkit consists of a "soft issues assessment" (SIA) and model to measure how suppliers and clients are collaborating after contracts have been awarded.

The SIA assesses issues such as how well the client and supplier are likely to be able to work together, whether there will be a cultural fit and trust. The collaboration model also measures the quality of those behaviours after the contract award and tries to relate it to outputs, including meeting deadlines and budgets.

DE is already using soft issues assessment. It has made up around 20 per cent of the weighting criteria for some large DE contracts awarded in the past few years. The organisation has only recently adopted the collaboration model. Both models are outlined in the toolkit.

John Doyle, collaboration project leader at ITS, told SM that procurement staff increasingly need to include these assessments in the overall process and that those hoping to win work have to demonstrate these competencies.

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