News

Following on from the recent discussions with Welsh Government WPA have managed to progress things regarding our provision of procurement options for new-build housing in South and Mid Wales.

In North Wales we set up a framework for housing construction in 2019-20 in response to client demand and an identified pipeline of work (2400 homes from 8 clients).

Welsh Government approached WPA in May/June 2020 to ask if we could set up a South Wales framework similar to the North Wales one but there are some reasons why we feel that this may not work:

• In South Wales there is no specific identified pipeline. Demand for new social housing remains high but social landlords have been reluctant to commit to any particular procurement route.
• Post Covid 19, the builders’ federations have agreed with WPA’s view that it will be unlikely that we would be able to get sufficient bids for a ‘speculative’ framework from the regional SME contractors. They are currently busy getting back to their sites from lockdown. Tendering now for a new framework would probably leave us without sufficient bids to establish an attractive enough framework.
• The timescales for setting up a framework would also mean that we probably would not be up and running until summer 2021.

We have therefore concluded that setting up a Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) gives us the best option at the moment to meet the demands of the market. Plus:

• A DPS is significantly quicker to set up.
• The flexibility of the DPS option enables us to bring in suppliers later on to meet specific demand from clients.
• The process is more SME-friendly than a framework tender.

We have published a PIN for a DPS which you can see here.

We are proposing that the DPS will offer four value bands in each of the South and Mid Wales counties:

• 1-5 units
• 6-15 units
• 16-49 units
• 50+ units

We will be looking to publish the CN in mid-September with a view to having the DPS ready to use from November 2020.

If there are contractors that you would like to see on the DPS please feel free to forward them the above link or ask them to contact WPA so that we can help them apply.