Openreach Procurement for Engineering Field Services

Situation & Approach: Deecon were engaged by Openreach help develop the contracts and lead the procurement for the Openreach Network Services Agreement (ONSA), a new framework contract for engineering field services. This was the largest tender in history for engineering field services in the UK telecommunications sector, with a value of £3bn from 2019-2024. This contract implemented new work management processes, increased IT integration and streamlined commercial operations, and introduced more stringent service level agreements for both Quality and Health and Safety. Further, Deecon led the procurement process from initial strategy through to contract award. This successfully delivered both an increase in delivery standards, Health and Safety requirements and significant savings over the term of the framework agreement. Deecon focus on delivering sustainable cost reduction for our clients. As a result, throughout this tender process we identified unnecessary cost drivers. This included reviewing internal contracts and processes and conducting collaborative dialogue sessions with tenderers. Each cost driver identified was assessed via a cost benefit analysis to quantify the value of removing them, allowing informed decisions by internal stakeholders. Finally, Deecon built a bespoke pricing model that required tenderers to provide pricing for all 593 work activities and their associated overhead costs. We used Deecon Core, our proprietary data analysis software, to consolidate and compare all tenderers’ pricing and produce unique negotiation packs for all 12 tenderers in 10 separate clarification sessions including a Best and Final Offer event. During the project, Deecon Core analysed approximately 12 million data points to ensure that both unsustainably low and abnormally high prices were addressed with tenderers. Results: This process delivered significant sustainable savings over the contract term.