Name:

William McCormick       

Organisation:

Southern Housing Group (SHG)

Position:

Procurement Manager

Number of properties & Location:

One of the largest landlords in the south of England with more than 25,000 properties.

What are the main benefits for you in working with PfH? Which framework agreements are you currently using? Are they meeting your expectations?

Firstly, working with PfH saves us both time and money associated with undertaking EU procurement processes. Agreements are competitively priced, well managed and offer real value for money for us.

PfH provide assistance and reassurance to the SHG team that what we do is aligned with government initiatives such as sustainable procurement. Central Billing removes the need to process individual invoices and provides us with important management information enabling us to do further analysis on our spend patterns.

At the moment we are using the Energy, Telecommunications (mobile) and Janitorial supplier’s agreements.  In addition we’re using Buy for London’s contract for Valliant boilers, which PfH created. The Waste Management and postal services agreements are currently being reviewed.

We’ve found the agreements simple and easy to use.  Suppliers offer good, reliable, efficient products and services.  We’ve made savings – both hard cash and in process efficiencies. The boiler agreement has generated rebates in excess of £80,000 so far.  The energy agreement has saved us around 10% and this will increase as we change to wholesale energy procurement.

We’re in the early stages with the mobile communications agreement but hope to realise benefit from reduced charges, increased management information and self billing system.

Are there any other agreements you’re looking at with PfH?

Most definitely, there are a number of areas being evaluated, such as audit services, door entry systems, gas servicing, legal services and travel management.

Are there any areas you would like to see PfH focus on in the future?

One major area that would add huge value to SHG, and no doubt other Members up and down the country, would be a contractor framework agreement covering new build and reinvestment programmes.

As labour and installation represent the lion’s share of the costs harnessing PfH’s buying power across almost 700 Members could pay real dividends.  Market research is a category nobody seems to have focused on yet we all undertake satisfaction studies and focus groups with our customers.

Estate contract services such as gardening, cleaning, estate agency services and water are also opportunities I’d like to see explored.

What do you think PfH can do better?

The only area is being slightly quicker to get to contract once PfH frameworks are announced at ‘feasibility’ stage or to provide estimated delivery dates for the deals. We often delay initiating our own contracts whilst we wait.