GO-AHEAD
“ If we ' re going to develop for the future of transport , we need to be looking at innovative step-change technologies ”
GLYN WATTS GROUP HEAD OF PROCUREMENT THE GO-AHEAD GROUP
“ APCOA was bristling with these sorts of ideas , and ways to make these spaces more sustainable . And with that in mind , we were no longer looking for a good debt collection company , or even a supplier primarily focused on parking ,” Watts says . “ The result is we now have a partner in APCOA with which we can develop those ideas over a number of years . They were successful largely because of the amount of ideas they had , and how well they can develop those , particularly in the sustainability space where they have strong partners in electrical vehicle charging .”
This mindset to balance innovation and cost has been codified in Go-Ahead ’ s recently published SME Strategy . With a roadmap of tenders published well in advance , Watts aims to give resourcelimited SMEs the time they need to prepare and meet Go-Ahead ’ s requirements , rather than being muscled out by market leading competitors that have the ability to throw resources at an issue at short notice .
“ Secondly , and probably more importantly , we ' re identifying SME-spendonly categories ,” Watts says . “ These are smaller categories of spend where we may currently use a big provider , but if there ' s a quality market there for SMEs , we ' re going to commit 100 % of the time to using SMEs . As long as the safety risks are understood , we ’ re going to get the quality we need , and there are no other issues , we ' re going to have a blanket policy that they have to be SMEs . There ’ s still work to do there , but we think it could have a big impact .”
Beyond Watts ’ 17-strong centralised procurement team , a further 30 procurement professionals operate from
122 November 2021