Housing Forum Partnering Toolkit Introduction
Summary of Successful Clienting
The Housing Forum demonstration projects clearly demonstrate that active clients lead the partnering process. They have stopped being victims of their own and others bad practices. Successful clients take responsibility for the careful selection of their partners. They are prepared to pay for what the job is worth, and they accept that contractors and other suppliers need to make a profit. But they are always looking for quality and added value. The vast majority of demonstration project clients have worked with their partners to avoid risk, the worst aspects of traditional procurement: risk dumping, seeking lowest price tender and not taking full account of the needs of residents.
Successful clients have stopped crudely policing contractors and have adopted new approaches to relationship management. They establish their key project objectives through strategic briefs and partnering workshops where users, suppliers and stakeholders can influence and shape the service.
Successful housing clients:
- Commit themselves to leading the team
- Spend time at the beginning of a project planning and preparing and defining what they want
- Make sure they appoint the right people and teams
- Clarify objectives and priorities – Time, Cost and Quality
- Consult, involve and satisfy their customers
- Seek Value for Money and take Whole Life Costs into account
- Work with the team to understand the risks involved in the project and make provision for them
- Consider performance incentives for the team
- Encourage Trust
- Insist on Transparency
- Ensure systems are in place to avoid disputes and for problem resolution when all else fails
- Measure, Manage, Evaluate and Review Performance to foster continuous improvement
The best clients work hard at integrating their own teams and organisations ready for involvement in partnering. They communicate and network to get support from key officers, colleagues and members. They link construction service delivery to wider corporate objectives and view every project, or every aspect of investment as something of greater value than just "bricks and mortar". For them construction is a way of "delivering or creating wider community assets".
To do this clients work hard to ensure that their contractors and suppliers are treated fairly and that they are encouraged to deliver added value. In return suppliers will receive proper rewards. On the other hand the client is not afraid to take firm action against failure but will help suppliers who are genuinely trying to improve their performances.
Strong clients use partnering - internal and external - as an effective way of doing business and of solving problems through negotiation and discussion. They will focus on the implementation of key performance management and measurement systems, and will ensure that issues of probity, audit and accountability and value for money are fully addressed. Good client leadership will define a clear context for the development of the whole team approach by using partnering type contracts and ensure that all risks are properly allocated and managed. Successful clients use partnering to deliver better services and value for money to their customers.
