Issue 2#

Carol Davidson Review Team Manager

New Training and Consultancy Website

Millstream welcomes

Graeme Fraser - Head of IT

Tendering Equal Opportunities

For Scottish Businesses by Tim Williams

Meet the staff:

Carol Davidson 15 years with

Tenders Direct,

Carol talks about

her role in the

company and

what has

changed since

she started.

20th Anniversary of Tenders Direct…………………..…………………..…2 Millstream Appointed Graeme Fraser as Head of IT……………….…4 Tendering Equal Opportunities For Scottish Businesses…….………6 Interview with Carol Davidson…………………………………..…………..…9 Millstream Training and Consultancy ………………………….…..………12

Table of Contents D

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http://training.millstream.eu

This year we’re delighted to celebrate the 20th anniversary of our Tenders Direct service. As the Tenders Direct Manager, I would like to thank all our customers for their support over the years in helping Tenders Direct grow from strength to strength into the leading tender alert service in the country.

Let me take this opportunity to give you some background behind the success of Tenders Direct. The service began life as the brain child of two directors of a small Aberdeen based company called Millstream Associates Ltd. Focusing initially on the oil and gas contractors, interested in receiving tender opportunities published by operators like BP and Shell, the customer base of Tenders Direct has now expanded to providing tenders for all types of products and services to customers all over the world. Millstream itself, has now expanded its portfolio of services beyond Tenders Direct in the last 10 years. The diversification began with the launch of the company’s flagship ‘MyTenders’

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procurement portal that allows public sector buyers to electronically publish tenders and receive responses from interested suppliers. This led to the company winning a contract with the Irish government to provide it’s national ‘E-Tenders’ procurement portal and also with the Scottish government to provide the ‘Public Contracts Scotland’ (PCS) portal. Millstream’s tentacles have also extended internationally and now operates ‘Doffin’ national procurement portal in Norway. Tim Williams, our Managing Director is now one of the country’s leading procurement experts providing guidance on public sector procurement regulations and best practice.

Tenders Direct – Early Days

Overview of Millstream’s services

A short history

20th Anniversary of Tenders Direct By Robert Brown

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Never resting on our laurels, we aim to take advantage of our strong market position as the country’s leading tender alert service provider. A recent expansion of our I.T. department will ensure we continue at the cutting edge in the development of our services and I look forward to continuing the journey with all our customers to ensure they never miss a tender opportunity.

As you can imagine, with changes in technology the Tenders Direct service has morphed out of all recognition in the last 20 years. When we began, there was no website and tender notices were faxed to our customers. One of our customers didn’t even have a fax machine so tenders had to be posted with a first class stamp! Now of course we email our tender notices on the day of publication and customers can manage tenders in their own workspace on the Tenders Direct website. Restricted initially to providing only the higher value tender notices published in ‘Official Journal’ (OJEU) almost half the tender notices we now provide are ‘below threshold’ tenders obtained from hundreds of different sources all over the country.

How Tenders Direct has changed

The future for Tenders Direct

One of our customers didn’t even have a fax machine so tenders had to be posted with a first class stamp!

Tenders Direct Website www.tendersdirect.co.uk

Robert Brown Tenders Direct Manager

Millstream operates the myTenders and Tenders Direct websites, which allow public sector organisations to publish tenders and private sector companies to bid for new business, as well as national procurement portals for Scotland, Ireland and Norway. Graeme will be responsible for overseeing Millstream’s IT infrastructure and software development teams, using emerging technology to develop the functions of the websites and portals to ensure they run as efficiently as possible for customers. This appointment is expected to pave the way for further growth at the Aberdeen-based company, which currently employs around 40 staff. Graeme has vast experience in enterprise web applications and customer portals, latterly working as a freelance software development consultant. With an increasing number of European governments and public authorities now handling procurement electronically to save money, time and comply with the latest EU legislation, he said it was an ideal time to join Millstream.

“Millstream is a company that’s very much centred around its people, who believe passionately in the strength of its products. The opportunity to join a skilled, enthusiastic team who are committed to technical excellence and customer service really appealed to me.” he said. “Procurement can be complex, so it’s vital that the products we provide are optimised to be as helpful as possible for our customers.”

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Millstream Appointed Graeme Fraser as Head of IT By Tim Williams

Graeme Fraser Head of IT

Leading e-procurement services provider Millstream has appointed Graeme Fraser as its new Head of Information Technology.

“I have been impressed with the solutions that have been implemented to some challenging problems. I see my role as listening to our customers’ needs to ensure our technology platform stays one step ahead, while ensuring that our products are always performing and that we continue to provide industry-leading solutions.” “I am also keen to ensure that within the business we are using the full power of our information systems to drive decision making.” Graeme lives in Aberdeenshire with his partner Victoria and away from work his hobbies include photography, motorsport, cycling and hill walking. Tim Williams, managing director of Millstream, said Graeme’s appointment would also lead to the creation of additional software developers posts. “We are delighted to have Graeme on board and welcome him to the team. He has a lot of experience in web applications and portal development, particularly around usability and accessibility, which are absolutely key in delivering our services. ” “Eventually all procurement processes will be conducted entirely online so harnessing technology will allow us to continue to grow as a company. We develop applications and add new features in response to demands from customers of the myTenders and Tenders Direct websites, as well as the national portals we run for several governments, including Public Contracts Scotland.” “Our aim is to make it as easy as possible for small and medium sized companies to identify new business opportunities and crucially to give them the best chance of winning that business,” he added. EU legislation means that contracting authorities must adhere to transparent, non-

discriminatory and proportional principles when purchasing goods and services. They must also advertise all contracts above threshold values in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU). Millstream was recently awarded extensions to its contracts with the Scottish and Irish Governments and also continues to provide the Doffin portal for the Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (Difi) in Norway. myTenders has been in operation since 2002, with more than 700 public sector organisations in the UK publishing all of their new business opportunities on the website. Millstream’s Tenders Direct website allows private companies from all sectors throughout Europe who are seeking new business opportunities to identify real business opportunities from the public sector, such as the government, local authorities, emergency services, health trusts and the armed forces.

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Tim Williams of Millstream looks at changes in public procurement and how SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) can win more business from the public sector. Public procurement often gets a bad press, particularly from SMEs, who complain that it’s only the big companies that win lucrative contracts. A recent survey by the Scottish Building Federation also suggested that construction companies were spending considerable sums of cash on unsuccessful bids or failing to secure a place on the shortlist after completing pre-qualification questionnaires (PQQs).

However, the Scottish public sector spends about £9billion every year and in 2011 more than 6,200 Scottish suppliers were awarded contracts - with 60% of all the suppliers who were awarded contracts being small and medium sized companies based in Scotland. The Government views procurement spend as a tool to enhance the productive capacity of the Scottish economy and improve firms’ international competitiveness. Ministers have announced plans to reform public procurement to improve Scottish businesses' access to contract opportunities, and following criticism over some of the replacement Forth Crossing contracts,

the Scottish Government is looking at ways in which public contracts can be used to develop the supply side of the economy. These include letting contracts of a size which maximises competition while maintaining economies of scale, using contracts to encourage training, innovation or capital investment and designing contracts that assist the development of an indigenous supply chain. Scottish public authorities could do more to support the greater use of small local companies without contravening the regulations, such as requiring prime contractors to sub-contract and to advertise their requirements locally, or breaking large contracts down into smaller lots. The Government is also exploring the use of Community Benefit clauses to promote training, apprenticeships and opportunities for people with disabilities and the long-term unemployed.

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Tendering Equal Opportunities For Scottish Businesses Point of View by Tim Williams – Managing Director

In the meantime though, one of the options for companies who are looking for new business opportunities in the public sector is to opt for lower value tenders. These have a contract value that falls below the EU threshold and are therefore not required to be published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU). For supplies or services, their value can vary from as little as a few thousand pounds to around £100,000, the threshold for most organisations to publish in the OJEU, with the exception of £3.9million for construction contracts.

Without the fear of competition from overseas contractors, lower value tenders are therefore particularly attractive to SMEs and legislation will soon be in place to allocate a certain percentage of all lower value contracts specifically to SMEs. Although lower value tenders don’t have to be published in the OJEU, there is still a legislative requirement for them to be openly advertised. Most organisations have chosen to do this electronically, either on their own website or through a web portal. Larger companies often have people employed to identify and follow up on tender opportunities, but there is a chance of missing out on smaller opportunities unless you are looking for them. At Millstream, we source lower value tenders from across the public sector to make them easy to access, opening up literally thousands of business opportunities to companies in Scotland. The award of contracts by publicly funded organisations is governed by the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2012, which implement European legislation.

Although lower value tenders don’t have to be published in the OJEU, there is still a legislative requirement for them to be openly advertised.

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This legislation is designed to promote equality of opportunity throughout Europe, which is predictably unpopular in times of recession, but if the UK wants to be able to export goods and services to Europe then we have to accept that European companies will expect access to our market. Although they are often criticised, the Contracts Regulations adopt quite a commonsense approach and set out a clear structure under which a contract will be awarded. The two main procedures are the open procedure, where the bid documents are sent to anyone who requests them and the restricted procedure where there is a prequalification

process to draw up a shortlist of candidates who will then be invited to complete the full bid documents. It is in the implementation of these rules that things tend to go badly wrong. The pre-qualification process too often asks for lots of bureaucratic information, which places a large burden on the companies responding, but does not always differentiate the good from the bad. The bid evaluation is now often against a rigid marking scheme, which too often constrains the discretion of the buyer to pick the best option. Later this year, the Government will be consulting on its proposals for a Sustainable

Procurement Bill, which is intended to help implement some of these measures, as well as possibly introducing a procurement tribunal. Getting the balance right will be critical in any new legislation. It is important to standardise the way in which contracts are awarded, but the processes need to be straightforward and reduce rather than increase the barriers facing Scottish companies who want to do business with the public sector.

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Tim Williams Managing Director of Millstream

My role is the Manager of the Tender Review Department. I manage a team of tender reviewers who, read through every English language tender published each day and check that our unique category system has correctly identified each tender. This manual review process is vital as this means that the tenders are very accurately categorised to ensure our customers never miss an opportunity. I am also responsible for maintaining our category system, creating new search categories when necessary and I advise my customer service team on the most appropriate categories to use especially if a particular customer’s products/services are slightly unusual.

We have thousands of different category codes on our system which are used to pick up every type of tender imaginable. They could be healthcare, IT, construction, industrial, cleaning, food, communications – the list is endless - and if we don’t have an extensive category to cover a product or service for a customer we will create one. In the I.T. Section for example we need to continually create new categories to keep up with new software development. Tenders Direct Category System

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Meet the staff – Interview with Carol Davidson

Q1: Describe your role in the company

Q2: Tell us more about Tenders Direct’s Unique Category System?

Carol Davidson Tenders Direct Review Team Manager

...our main line of business is still providing tenders to our customers we now also offer training , consultancy and we also host several tendering portals.

Find out more about Millstream Associates here.

I have worked for Millstream and Tenders Direct for 15 and a half years.

When I first started with Millstream I worked in a small office with a handful of other employees. We had around seventy customers who were mainly oil and gas, construction and IT. The internet was relatively new so we had to communicate with our customers by phone, fax and letter and they received their tenders by automatic fax on a daily basis which could take several hours to dispatch. Our company today is unrecognisable compared with fifteen years ago. Millstream and Tenders Direct is now a large company employing many staff with many different departments within the company. Our Tenders Direct service is now totally web based – we have our own website, our customers apply online, they can view and keep track of their tenders online, we send their tender alerts by email and most of our communications are carried out online making our service much more efficient which is just as well as we now have several thousand customers! Although our main line of business is still providing tenders to our customers we now also offer training , consultancy and we also host several tendering portals.

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Q3: How long have you worked with Millstream & Tenders Direct?

Q4: How has the company changed since you have first started?

My favourite aspects of my job is setting off the dispatch of the tenders to our customers each day knowing that the review has been completed and the tenders have been accurately classified. I also enjoy setting up any new category codes for products. This may involve searching the internet to find out as much information as I can about a particular product so I am aware exactly what that product does, performing an archive search of previously published tenders going back several years to look at any suitable tenders that mention this product and then compiling the new category code using computerised search strings so that any tenders published in the future for this product will be picked up by this new category code..

If I was marooned on a desert island I would like to have a toolbox (so that I could make any item I may need including a boat), a set of encyclopaedias to keep my mind active and help identify any unwanted visitors to my campsite (and hopefully show me how to make a boat) and a solar GPS to help me on my way once I had completed my boatbuilding exercise!

Tenders Direct Support Team – T. 0800 681 6618

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Q6: If you were marooned on a desert island, what three things would you have to have and why?

Q5: What are the favourite aspects of your job?

Millstream Training

Are you new to public sector tendering and need

help getting started?

Or maybe you are looking to apply best practice to

bid management and writing.

Whatever your training needs we have two

courses which could help.

Course 1 – A Striking PQQ - A start to finish guide

to completing PQQs including:

Understand OJEU notices

Make go/no go decisions

Understand PQQs and how they're evaluated

Look at key policies needed and determine if

your business is tender ready

Answer questions to score the best marks

Format and submit your finished PQQ

Course 2 – A Compelling Bid – An end to end

review of the tender process including:

Understand the tender documentation

Plan your bid strategy, resources and skills

Use an executive summary to maximum

effect

Answer questions with greatest impact

Format and submit the final documents

Review post-bid activities

Our next courses are:

17 and 18 October in London

13 and 14 November in Leeds and

27 and 28 November in London

Millstream Consultancy

Do you need help writing your pre-qualification

questionnaire or tender?

Or maybe we could critique your documents before

submission.

Our consultancy service is designed to give you the

support you need at all stages of the tendering

process.

Examples of the service we offer include the below

but we would be happy to provide a consultancy

service tailored to your specific business needs:

Critique and Coaching:

Act as a critical friend for written documents.

Review and analyse previously written

documents.

Tender Writing:

Write your PQQ or tender.

Compile supporting documents and policies.

Provide model answers tailored to your

business for future tender submissions.

Tender Management:

Provide support to manage the tender

process and tender submission.

Manage the entire tender process to tender

submission.

“Friendly, professional, detailed and all very keen to ensure that we all derived maximum benefit from the day.

Thoroughly productive and enjoyable day.” Drew Davidson, Cooperative Travel Management

“An excellent grounding in the nightmare that is tendering.” Graham North, Fully Furnished

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Millstream Training and Consultancy Check out our new look website on http://training.millstream.eu or call 0844 561 0675 if you would like more information