INTERVIEW DEFENCE INFRASTRUCTURE
26 JULY 2020
of military personnel’s houses to taking the
necessary steps needed to ensure troop’s
accommodation is made safe for occupation.
It has also been involved in areas where
the military has been deployed to help deal
with the pandemic, including setting up the
Nightingale hospitals, testing centres and
mortuaries.
“We as service providers have had
to support all of those areas while
implementing changes to the way that
we operate”, says Brewer, “and I’ve been
delighted with the way both our hard and
so FM providers have worked with us over
the last few weeks.”
FUTURE INNOVATION
Brewer admits that the DIO has not
historically been at the forefront in taking
advantage of the latest technologies, which
is why the new contractual arrangements are
geared towards creating a strong culture of
innovation.
“Technology and innovation are a key part
of the tender process,” he explains, “in order
to help create a commercial platform where
everybody involved in the process is driven
to ensure continuous improvement throughout the
life of the contract. To build all of the mechanisms
that enable that, my team will play a di erent
role from that of a client role of the past in being a
catalyst for technological innovation.”
He adds: “One of the reasons for getting multiple
providers involved was you get people who’ve been
working on di erent developments who can bring
that back into our delivery.”
FM services suppliers o en comment that it’s
di icult to innovate when faced with relatively short
three to five-year contracts. The new DIO contracts
are for an initial seven years, with the option of a
further three-year extension to a 10-year relationship,
o ering much more scope for development,
Explains Brewer: “The idea is to get through the
initial mobilisation phase, ensure that the systems
and suppliers are up and running and quite quickly
determine if the contract is working. Once it is
established we will aim to commit to the full duration
of the contract as quickly as possible. In this way
we’ve created the contractual and behavioural
mechanisms that allow us to develop strong
partnership relationships.”
Brewers also believes that it’s not feasible to create
prescriptive, inflexible contracts – as they would be
out of date in six-month’s time and “like a dinosaur”
in 10 years. He’s very clear that the new contracts
will take a dynamic and evolving route and not
end up delivering a static service. For this reason,
transparency from the tender process, throughout
the lifecycle of the contracts will be crucial.
“Like all big organisations I’m sure there are
occasions where we don’t get it right and the
messages don’t get through, but we’ve made a
philosophical commitment to working in partnership
and once you really believe in that and respect the
unique skills that suppliers bring to the mix it’s in
your best interest to be transparent”, he says.
“We want every organisation to put their best
o er forward. Fundamentally that philosophical
commitment to transparency and openness will be
at the cornerstone of our success going forward.”
There are a number of areas that he
believes are particularly important about the
environment contractors are delivering into
that will set them up for success. He believes
strongly that people are at their best when
working in environments where they doing
something that they really believe in and feel
passionately about.
“Within the DIO team there is a mixture
of people who are current serving military,
ex-serving military or civilians with long
standing military connections, all deeply
committed and who really believe in what
they are doing.”
PANDEMIC READY
With the COVID-19 pandemic and
subsequent lockdown taking place just as
the tenders for the FDIS Accommodation
services were going out, a review was
carried out to check if the process could
take place remotely. Online workshops with
bidders were held to determine whether it
was helpful or unhelpful continuing with
the process during lockdown; recognising
that this represents a major economic and
employment opportunity.
Says Brewer: “We had open conversations
and concluded we were still well placed to
have a healthy competition. We made a few
tweaks a er recognising bidders might find it
hard to get pricing from their supply chain so
the timing was extended.
“So far, we’ve got one national
accommodation contract and four regional
ones, with all the bidders we expected to bid
for the national one doing so, and regionally
a strong representation in all areas.” With
the latter, he explains: “We didn’t want
organisations to bid for every region if in
some areas of the country they weren’t set
up to deliver a good service, so we asked
‘which areas are you most concentrated and
suit you the best?’”
The DIO has also managed to maintain
service largely as usual throughout the
lockdown; from the repair and maintenance
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