Making Effective Decisions Grade 7 Example Statement (500 Words)

SI led the commercial workstream for a public body's estates function. We were re-letting a three-year maintenance contract worth £4.5m a year, covering 60 sites and around 2,000 reactive repairs a year across three regions. Evaluation left two bidders separated by less than 2% on overall score: the incumbent, reliable but increasingly expensive, and a challenger 9% cheaper with strong references but no track record at our scale.

TAs senior responsible owner for the procurement, I had to make the award recommendation to our investment committee, balancing price, delivery risk and our duty to achieve value for public money, knowing whichever I chose would be challenged by the losing bidder and scrutinised at audit.

AI was aware the easy and least controversial option was to award to the incumbent, so I forced a disciplined comparison instead of following instinct. First I verified the headline numbers myself. I asked both bidders to reconfirm their pricing schedules, and our quantity surveyor validated that the challenger's rates were genuinely deliverable rather than a loss-leader, checking them against market benchmarks for the five highest-volume repair types. Second, I tested delivery risk. I spoke to three of the challenger's referees directly rather than relying on written references, and asked each the same question about what happened when contracts went wrong. Two described strong recovery performance; one described a slow first six months, which told me mobilisation was the real risk. Third, I modelled whole-life cost. The incumbent's price rose with an uncapped inflation clause that could add £400,000 over the term, while the challenger offered a capped formula. I weighed this against the challenger's weaker balance sheet, so I asked finance to run financial standing checks and confirm the parent-company guarantee they had offered was enforceable. I then set out the options for the committee with a clear rationale: award to the incumbent at a premium of about £390,000 over three years, award to the challenger with enhanced mobilisation conditions, or split the contract by region, which our legal advice said would breach the published tender terms. I recommended the challenger, subject to three conditions I had already tested as deliverable with their bid team: a phased mobilisation starting with 15 sites, monthly performance reviews against fixed response-time targets for the first year, and the parent guarantee lodged before signature. I documented the scoring rationale line by line, anticipating the audit trail, and personally briefed the incumbent after standstill to manage the relationship, since they held other contracts with us.

RThe committee accepted the recommendation unanimously, and the award survived the standstill period unchallenged. In the first year the contract delivered 96% of repairs within target time, saved £340,000 against the incumbent's best price, and the mobilisation conditions meant the one early performance dip was corrected within a month. The internal audit review rated the procurement green, specifically praising the documented rationale, and I used the same conditional-award approach on two further contracts worth a combined £2.1m.