David Ogden – Education Funding Agency

Background and context

The Education Funding Agency is an Executive

Agency of the Department for Education.

It provides revenue and capital funding for

education (3 -19) and supports the delivery of

building and maintenance programmes for schools,

academies, Free Schools and sixth-form colleges

Arm’s Length Body reform

The Department implemented a huge change programme,

with several of its arm's length bodies closing and others

becoming part of the Department. As a result, there are four

new executive agencies responsible for key delivery

functions:

• The Standards & Testing Agency,

• The Teaching Agency,

• The National College Agency

• The Education Funding Agency

Change in Education Capital expenditure

Labour’s flagship programme for investment in the

education estate was ‘Building Schools for the Future’

(BSF), a £65bn programme targeted to rebuild or

refurbish every secondary school in England

It was an ‘Educational Transformation’ programme

delivered by Local Authorities and overseen by

Partnerships for Schools.

BSF: Procurement and auditability

Responsibility was with the Local Authority (LA).

Depending upon local skill, experience and

financial resource the management of the process

varied from management by e-mail / dedicated

administrative personnel to full Collaborative

Software packages.

Priority School Building Programme

On 24 May 2012, the Secretary of State

announced which schools will have their condition

needs addressed through the Priority School

Building programme (PSBP).

This is a £2.7bn programme

targeted at the 261 schools in

England considered to be in the

worst condition.

It is predicated on utilising Private Finance

although 42 schools will be rebuilt using capital

funds.

The schools are batched geographically:

7 Capital Funded batches

19 Private Finance batches

Rebuilding projects

The PSPB • To be delivered by Central Government

• The EFA is responsible for and will manage the procurement being

a single intelligent client

• Focused on building condition

• Must reduce bidding costs to the private sector

• Baseline designs to be used by the EFA and shared with contractors

to make design process more efficient and effective (share lessons

learnt, standardisation of proven technical solutions etc.)

• 5 year programme

What we need to manage the process

As a managing agent, Central Government (not the LA) needs to

take responsibility for document control, procurement compliance

and efficiency. Issues to consider:

Data Room Provision (Data Repository)

Iterative nature of the Competitive Dialogue Process used in

Private Finance procurement

»Collaborative working environment

Compliance Management / auditability

Security of existing data

Bidder confidentiality

Needs to sit outside the DfE environment

Needs to function as a data repository (Electronic data room)

Version control is important, although easily managed

Key correspondence to be retained for audit purposes:

– Questions / clarifications from bidders

– Response to bidders

Document submission in electronic format

Ability to control access to data (bidders can’t see others’ submissions etc)

Collaborative software requirements

Scalable in use

Web-based platform, not constrained to operating system

Must not be so big / complex that it distracts from running projects

Must be intuitive – avoid extensive training and support costs

Does not need resourcing or cost capability

Collaboration software requirements

Approval Process Control

Assignment Tracking

Assumptions Management

Benefits Realization

Billing & Chargeback Tracking

Budgeting & Forecasting

Change Management

Cost-to-Completion Tracking

Customizable Functionality

Deliverables Management

Dependency Management

Expense Tracking

Fault Management

Gantt Charts

Knowledge Management

Legacy System Integration

Lessons Learned

Milestone Tracking

Multi-Currency / Language

Percent-Complete Tracking

Portfolio Management

Progress Tracking

Project Accounting / Estimating

Project Workflow

Quality Control

Reporting

Requirements Management

Resource Management

Risk Management

Scheduling

Skill Pool Management

Time Management / Tracking

Software features available in commercial packages include:

Collaboration software requirements

Uses workspaces that allow clear project demarcation

and management

Audit trail / version control

Backup / archive

IL2 security

Paperless submissions

Ensuring Bidder confidentiality: Permissions, teams

Huddle: How it supports our objectives

Spin offs - workspaces created for:

• Best practise

• Standard documents

• Programme level documents

• Schools in pipeline

• Sport England Consultation

• Templates for standard file structures

Huddle: How it supports our objectives

Rolled out with minimal training

Can be simplified for use by the private sector

Advisors have readily adopted it without training

Online help available

Provides focused collaboration features and is low maintenance

Usage rising from 227 users to 350 users

The best feature is that it is intuitive

Huddle: How it supports our objectives

If using for tender submission ensure ability to close access

when deadline passed

Whiteboards and discussions are communal - Use for non-

confidential information only

Select project management features according to need, avoid

excessive features

Private Sector needs of Collaborative software differ from Public

Sector - understand your needs and objectives

Observations

The G-Cloud Programme

Cloud computing has brought about a step

change in the economics and sustainability of

Information and Communication Technology.

Government is committed to the adoption of

cloud computing and delivering computing

resources. The G-Cloud is an iterative

programme of work to achieve this which will

deliver fundamental changes in the way the

public sector procures and operates ICT.

Thank you

Questions & Answers