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UK DESIGN INDUSTRY DEBATES ACCREDITATION
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BDI asks. Is Accreditation the way forward to improve public sector tendering?
The BDI Pitch versus Productivity Research undertaken in partnership with Firedog Design and supported by ISBA (November 2005) highlighted significant difficulties encountered by buyers seeking to appoint design agencies.
The research launched in November 2006 also showed that due to those difficulties free pitching is rife and costs the design sector £1.7bn per annum against an overall turnover figure for the industry of just *£4.6bn (*BDI Valuation Survey 2004/5)
Another alarming figure to emerge was 26% of all pitches and tenders never come to fruition.
Public sector tendering attracted major criticism from the design sector which according to the research is costing agencies upwards of 12% of lost man hours and £38,000 per annum per agency.
However this cannot be treated as a one sided argument, there are clearly key problems to be addressed on both sides.
Public sector is bound by procurement rules as it is public money that has to be protected from misuse. In addition every company should be given an opportunity to win public sector projects, regardless of type or size.
With 4,500 agencies operating in the UK it is difficult for those not regularly working with design agencies to assess which ones are best suited to which type of tender.
Thereby up for discussion in January and until end of April between 200 agencies is the question ‘would an accreditation system assist both agency and commissioning body’?
Early feedback suggests it would.
The key complaints regards public sector tenders are:
1. Repetitive completion of 40 page documents for low value projects, where many questions or requirements are deemed irrelevant to the appointment of a design agency.
“Why does the Council want to know my asbestos policy and demand £5million P.I insurance for a £10,000 graphics job – how dangerous is that project going to be?”
2. Issuing of tenders or advertising of tenders resulting in 100’s of agencies competing for low value projects.
3. Requests for ‘free’ creative concepts to be submitted with the tender documentation without the benefit of a meeting, a brief or any other normal appointment procedures.
4. No formal feedback.
“We most often just presume we haven’t won the project because we didn’t receive a letter or phone call to tell us any different and none of our call were returned. We have no idea why we didn’t win, who did, or where our work ended up”
5. Withdrawal of projects/tenders without satisfactory explanation, after completion of tender documentation involving weeks of work and full submission to the stipulated deadline.
“We had to bring staff in to work between Christmas and New Year to meet a 31st December deadline. A month later the project was still not placed, 4 months later after incessant chasing for a decision we were simply told the project had been cancelled.
“ Having been informed in writing that we had won the project following pre-qualification, full tender submission, short-listed credentials presentation, and final decision meeting - a process lasting 12 weeks, we turned up for the meet the team and official briefing meeting to be told the CEO had decided not to re-brand after all”
6. Price driven tenders where submissions demand full print, production and photography costs before any creative solutions are known.
7. Unfair copyright terms
“We have received several tenders demanding free concepts are sent with the tender which become the property of the commissioning body regardless of whether we win the project – we put them in the bin”
An Accreditation system could assist to alleviate some of these issues however whenever accreditation raises its head so to does a degree of nervousness amongst agencies.
It is important that an accreditation system is as fair for small agencies as it is for larger agencies. And should a kite mark be introduced that it does not turn into an elitist system. It needs to take account of new and young agencies and not be a barrier to creativity or innovation. It needs to take account of professionalism without stifling the creative process.
Importantly an Accreditation system and or kite mark must have credibility and mean something to government as well as private sector. It needs to be supported by all of the design bodies.
Thereby it needs to be driven by the design industry itself and conclusions reached that will work for all agencies regardless of type or size and as importantly it needs to work for government as well as private sector procurement officers.
Suggestions to date, which still need a lot of work, are however very sensible ones and provide a starting point for the design sector to offer feedback before a Draft document is produced and handed over to other stakeholders on the procurement side for their comment.
Here are some of the design sector suggestions to date that have emerged through face to face discussions between 20 MD’s of small to mid-sized agencies and by email from a further 80 agencies.
1. Separate Creative Industries procurement from that of equipment, supplies and construction.
2. Develop a set of pre-qualification documents, for each design discipline, containing only questions that are relevant to that discipline.
3. Determine the professional items a design business should be required to invest in e.g Professional Indemnity insurance, employees liability insurance, training and CPD, professional qualifications, project management procedures etc;
4. Develop a stage of accreditation according to agency disciplines, size and the geographical markets they operate in and match the professional items required to that stage of accreditation.
5. A, for example, stage one through to five stage accreditation system would denote the type and size of agency (or freelancer) and whether it was operating locally, regionally, nationally, European wide or internationally.
6. A small graphics agency operating locally would only perhaps need a Stage One accreditation but could progress up to the next stage as their company grows and their markets expand. The amount of P.I cover, and commitment to CPD etc would be limited to a level appropriate to the agency size and market of operation. An agency at Stage 5 accreditation might be the larger agencies operating internationally and thus requiring much higher levels of P.I Insurance and commitment to training, CPD, job management system, IT investment, sub-contractor contracts etc.
7. If a staged accreditation system were in place it could also be linked to accrediting the projects themselves. For example, a tender could be advertised as an Accreditation Stage one project according to type, value and market application.
8. Accreditation should be set up online; and renewed annually.
9. Agencies could update their information as new skills are added or growth and expansion occurs leading to an upgrade, any time during the year, to the next accreditation level.
10. The choice of accreditation stage and its maintenance would therefore be in the control of the agency itself; to the agreed guidelines laid down by the design sector balanced against the needs of procurement officers, at inception of the system.
11. With knowledge of what the accreditation stages denote public and private sector procurement officers should be able to assess whether their requirement was best suited to a Stage one through to 5 accredited agencies.
Management issues
12. Who will pay for it to be set up? – suggestions of course have fallen to government funding such as SBS, COI, Dffee, Sector Skills Council
13. Who will manage the applications – suggestions have been: Set-up an independent body Design Agency Accreditation, with trained staff drawn from the design sector, and housed within a government agency. Or hire one or more person in every region housed at the RDA.
14. What stops an agency ‘cheating’ and stating they are accredited when they are not? Suggestions have included: Use of the kite mark is by annual license fee; all agencies with accreditation status are viewable by the buyers online.
15. What happens if, for example, the business of a stage 3 accredited agency down-sizes and cuts the professional items that led it to achieve stage three? Suggestions have been, the agency has a duty of care to amend its online accreditation and downgrade but can upgrade again at any time. Like applying for annual Car Tax renewal, the agency would need to scan and upload their current P.I certificates and confirm their number of professionally qualified designers every year etc; and thereby could lose or downgrade their accreditation stage.
Costs
16. How much would it cost an agency to be accredited? Suggestions, if government paid for the set-up costs and for a period of 3 years operational funding of (or the RDA) the staff salaries; agencies would pay an affordable annual fee potentially linked to accreditation stage or size of agency. Fees could be payable to one account to build funds to make the Design Agency Accreditation sustainable beyond the funding period.
17. Would agencies also have to be a member of a Professional body or trade association to apply for accreditation? Suggestions: No, whilst membership status is likely to be an accreditation question, it should not form part of whether an agency achieves accreditation status. Agencies should not be forced or worried into joining any organisation; that choice should be a separate business decision.
Marketing and market acceptance
18. How will the Accreditation system become known to public sector procurement officers and or the private sector procurement officers? Suggestions: All design bodies could endorse and promote it; agencies themselves could promote it and government could put in place a campaign to communicate it to all public sector procurement officers. It becomes the joint responsibility of those who benefit and wish it to succeed.
SUMMARY
Whilst these are all suggestions, Accreditation is an important topic and if you feel such a proposal will affect you this is the time to get involved and ensure your opinion is heard and your experience noted. Due to the difficulties highlighted in the BDI Pitch versus Productivity research – any improvement to the tendering and appointment process should be beneficial to all parties involved.
BDI’s own opinion is that, designed appropriately an accreditation system is not a bad move forward. We sense that accreditation of some form is an inevitable occurrence for all sorts of reasons. Thereby we have tabled this debate to provide the design sector with the opportunity to inform and assist the process.
How can you get involved?
If any agency or opinion former wishes to make comment or feedback on its peer group suggestions or any points made or missed in this suggestions piece please email info@britishdesign.co.uk with ‘Accreditation Comment’ in the subject title.
Lunches are taking place between Directors or MD’s from agencies in your area until the end of April 2006. BDI is managing the lunch list and administration but will not be attending them. Discussions are between agencies (and clients if they wish to attend) and comments fed back to the centre to compile opinion and produce a Draft report to be made available to those whom it concerns and whose buy-in is desired.
If you would like to put your name down on the lunch list email amy@britishdesign.co.uk with Lunch in the subject title.
Peer to peer – several agencies are intending to write directly to other agencies in their area to seek their opinion towards accreditation.
BDI have scheduled a meeting with government procurement policy makers to feed your opinions to them and gain their support towards revising the current tendering procedures.
And if you have any other suggestions of how to gain design sector feedback on this subject (or other industry topics you feel are important) then do let us know and we will do our best to accommodate your ideas.
Submitted: 30 Jan 2006
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