Sprunt develop additional partnering arrangement

Sprunt has been appointed by Shepway District Council to manage the development and implementation of a new partnering arrangement for Folkestone, Hythe and Romney Marsh.

Sprunt, one of the UK's leading property and renewal consultancies has been appointed by Shepway District Council to manage the development and implementation of a new partnering arrangement for Folkestone, Hythe and Romney Marsh.

An earlier partnered repairs service also developed by Sprunt, celebrated its first anniversary this year reflecting the importance of first-class consultation between staff and residents.

The success of the service follows Sprunt's examination of the Council's existing procedures for dealing with a repair, which highlighted that staff spent nearly three-quarters of their time dealing with paperwork, and only 25% of their time on tenant-facing activities.

As a result, tenants now report repairs directly to the contractor with invoices raised on a monthly basis, providing a dramatic reduction in paperwork to some 12% of staff time.

Additional time is now spent on tenant-facing activities such as telephone surveys, designed to check that repairs are completed satisfactorily.

New procedures to support the selection of appropriate contractors and re-evaluate the repairs function were also evaluated.

In addition, the repairs pricing mechanism has been changed from a schedule of rates, to a monthly fee based on a price per property, simplifying administration and encouraging contractors carry out long-lasting repairs.

To help make this happen, Sprunt introduced workshops with officers, councillors and residents to gauge their views on the service, and develop ideas for improvements.

The findings were subsequently incorporated in to the tender documents.

The tender, based on an evaluation model offering equal weightings to price and quality issues, was subsequently sent out to short-listed companies in the Official Journal of European Union.

"Partnering contracts have typically been the domain of the big contractors".

"However, these new contracts were won by B.Wilson Builders for general repairs and Armature Electrical for electrical repairs".

"Whilst new to partnering and the Egan principles, both companies being local, family-based firms had previously worked for Shepway District Council," pointed out John Taphouse, head of Sprunt's project management consultancy team.

"The companies were willing and sufficiently far-sighted enough to appreciate that partnering-based contracts offer improved administration and job satisfaction".

"Shepway and Sprunt worked with both firms to help make necessary adjustments to their management culture.".

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