Edinburgh Dental Surgery maintenance contract

Overview

Cadaema was approached by Family Dental Care to support with the procurement of a coordinated maintenance and repair service to their building in Prestonpans, Edinburgh.

They wanted an organisation that was big enough to provide the necessary statutory and proactive maintenance activities and knowledge, but also be small and local enough to provide quick, cost-effective support whenever they had an issue that needed attention.

Cadaema’s role

To create a list of organisations who would want to bid for the work, that met Family Dental Care’s requirements.

Cadaema’s David Parrett briefed each identified organisation separately to elicit their interest, asking them to provide a written document detailing how they would deliver services to the surgery so that an assessment could be made of their cultural fit with Family Dental Care.

Each organisation then had a short, online meeting with the surgery team to ensure they could develop a good working relationship.

In consultation with the surgery, Cadaema selected one organisation and took them through the pricing process, with Cadaema ensuring the price given was in line with the current market and that the resulting contract represented a fair share of operational and commercial risk between the provider and Family Dental Care.

Key criteria

• Location to ensure immediate responsiveness
• Size of the organisation to ensure the perfect mix of being small enough to be highly responsive, but big enough to provide coverage as and when needed
• Cultural fit

Challenges

Large organisations are used to the procurement process, but the dental surgery had never been through the process before. It was vital that Cadaema ensured they understood the contract itself, and that the surgery team had the right information to be able to thoroughly review and amend the contract before signing, all of which needed to be done in a very short timeframe.

Solution

The Cadaema team ran a comprehensive, on-site mobilisation period (the time between agreeing the contractor to select and work starting), between the contractor and the dental surgery team. This included administering the provider with familiarisation of the building, and agreeing a call-out list of who to contact when action is needed.

Once the contract went live, three follow-up meetings were held with the practice management team to make sure everything was going to plan.

It was agreed that the initial contract would run for two years, enough time to determine if the contract is working well. After that point, if a need to go back to market is identified, Cadaema will be on hand to support the team through that analysis.

The role of risk management

Cadaema approaches risk in a number of ways. Throughout the bid, a risk register was created and maintained. Meetings with the client were held weekly and at each meeting the first agenda item was the risk register, which covered such things as risk to the operation of the building.

This included what would happen if no maintenance was carried out and the building became unusable; perception risk; and critical health and safety risk.

This was followed by a commercial risk process. For example, what would happen if the prices submitted from the bidders were too high and therefore out of the allotted budget.

Once this process and mobilisation was complete, the contract went live, and the risk register was handed over to the client to be used for the risk management of the contract itself.

Sustainability and environmental impact

Bidders were asked to articulate their approach to both sustainability and environmental impact to ensure they aligned with the dental surgery’s ethos.

Conclusion

The contract has now been in place for six months and is running well, with all key criteria, including sustainability and environmental impact, satisfied.

Client Statement

Cadaema understood exactly what we were looking for. The process was new to us and Cadaema communicated well, explaining what we should expect of the company we chose. We felt well supported and, although our lack of experience could have been a challenge, Cadaema guided us through the process, chairing meetings, asking relevant questions and keeping things on track. Environmental impact and sustainability were also important to us, so a local provider was key. The maintenance contract has been excellent since it went live and we would consider working with Cadaema again. We would not have been able to navigate the process of appointing a maintenance company without them.

Lesley Gemmell, Practice Manager