Waikato Business News May/June 2021

6 WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS May/June 2021
Call to council: Spend local
From page 4
indicated similar concerns.
Print House sales manager
Steve O’Toole says they have
had frustrating dealings in the
past with multiple council staff
often leading nowhere, made
more difficult by regular turnover
of their staff. “The staff we
do get to deal with are always
very good and appreciate the
working relationship that we
have with them, but in overall
terms it seems the council does
not have a preference towards
using local print suppliers.”
Magud, who has been in
the job two years, acknowledges
that for people looking in
from the outside, the council’s
procurement rules can appear
complex.
However, the council is
open to feedback and improvement.
“We genuinely like to
have access, open and transparent
and available to the public,
make sure that they've got good
access, make sure they know
the processes of how to bid
and what [are] the items we’re
looking for,” he says.
“Historically, there’s probably
been room for improvement
in that respect.”
As well as the potential
open day workshop sessions
for potential suppliers, Magud
floats the idea of putting an
information pack out, while
he is also looking at posting an
enhanced programme of projects
on the council website,
including where to go to bid.
In the meantime, registering
for free on the council’s
Tenderlink portal provides a
way for potential suppliers to
both tender for work and keep
an eye on what’s coming up.
He says Tenderlink provides
a transparent chronology for
the council receiving tenders,
while it also sends out notifications
to registered potential
suppliers of tender activity.
Phillips says council staff
he and O’Toole have dealt with
have always advised them to
use the Unimarket portal for
quotes, notifications, receiving
orders and billing purposes.
"We have used the Unimarket
portal for at least 12 years
and pay a transaction fee based
on a percentage value of any
job processed for the council,”
he says. To his knowledge they
had not been informed about
the Tenderlink portal, and he
suggested it should have been
presented to potential suppliers
when it was initiated.
“It seems rather strange for
the council to have two systems
operating for similar procurement
purposes.”
Hamilton architect Antanas
Procuta says one
potential barrier for
firms such as his is a system
of panels of preferred suppliers.
He says the initiative was
started by MBIE and is filtering
down through public funders
generally including councils
and, locally, Waikato Local
Authority Shared Service
(WLASS).
On the face of it, the principle
is simple, and intended to
aid efficiency of procurement.
“The intent is that, for every
project you do, you don't have
to go to tender to lots of businesses
and to an open market,
you've got a limited market.”
I’d really like to
focus around how
we can advantage
Hamiltonians,
especially as it’s the
ratepayers’ funds
that we’re spending.
In practice, Procuta says, the
matrix applied in order to select
panel members seems to favour
larger providers with a range of
capabilities, more often nationals
or even multinationals.
His firm spent 16 years
undertaking projects for
Waikato University, where
he says the people doing the
procuring had their ear to the
ground and would try out different
firms for different jobs.
That saw Paua doing some
award-winning work for the
university and yet, when the
new procurement system was
brought in three or four years
ago, Procuta’s firm failed to get
on the panel despite its prior
record.
“The local is definitely disadvantaged,
and that's really
unfortunate. And the other
thing it prevents is the young,
new firms getting a step in with
those larger clients.
“So that's really problematic,
because younger people
that have come through the
universities have new ideas,
new learnings, they're excited,
they can do things differently.”
He cites architect Jørn
Utzon, who was just 38 when
he won the competition to
design the Sydney Opera
House.
It can become self-perpetuating,
with firms excluded
from the opportunities unable
to build the capability to then
make it on to the panels.
“My concern is that it
almost seems anti-competitive
and almost anti-democratic.
I don't know if that's the right
phrasing to use, but basically,
it's using ratepayers’ money,
taxpayers’ money, to support
fewer larger firms and the
smaller local firms miss out.”
Procuta returned from leading
Wellington firm Athfield
Architects to set up a practice
in his hometown Cambridge,
because he wanted to contribute
to his local area, which
has seen him involved in
supporting a number of projects
including Embassy Park
and the refurbishment of the
Meteor in Hamilton.
“That would be the same for
consultants all over New Zealand.
If they're local, they'd like
to be doing work in their local
area for their community.”
By comparison, he says, in
parts of Europe and in Victoria,
Architect Antanas Procuta says procurement panels can present
a barrier to local firms, which want to contribute to their
community. He was involved in the refurbishment of the Meteor.
Australia, there is a requirement
for architectural commissions
above a certain value to
go to a competition.
“The beauty of an architectural
competition is that
suddenly it's a level playing
field. We've actually won our
large projects through design
competitions, and we've been
up against some large, large
firms.”
Procuta says it was to the
credit of Waipā District Council
that when Covid arrived, it
adopted a policy of trying to
procure more locally.
Waipā mayor Jim Mylchreest
says his council has done
what it can to support local in
the Covid era but makes an
intriguing point around the limits
of such procurement - essentially
that the risk for Waipā
firms, for instance, is that they
get locked out of other markets.
Hamilton City Council
chief executive Richard Briggs,
who views localness as meaning
Waikato-wide, says there
is a challenge around having a
big enough local pool and the
question of the council’s role in
fostering a “rich market”.
“Do we encourage collaboration,
because it may be that
what we want is a multidisciplinary
outcome but only international
firms have a multidisciplinary
outcome, or [do] we
create and foster and make it
easy for a cluster of individual
disciplines?”
More radically, with recruitment
difficult at the moment,
he ponders whether procuring,
rather than recruiting, could in
some cases provide an answer.
“Could we encourage the market
to respond, could we create
a market for someone to make
some money out of it?”
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