Whilst all the guidance in this station should be considered when procuring, specific Care and Support Services guidance can be found in Developing the Service Specification.

You can apply life cycle costing as part of the specification and subsequent evaluation. 

Life cycle costing takes into account all of the identifiable costs of a product or service from its purchase to  use, maintenance and end of life (recycling / disposal). 

These can be direct costs like scheduled maintenance and energy used through the life of a road sweeping vehicle and also less apparent external environmental costs such as the cost of emissions of greenhouse gas based on the energy use of the road sweeping vehicle.

These costs can only be assessed when:

• based on criteria that don’t favour or disadvantage any potential bidders;
• The assessment method is accessible to all interested parties;
• The data required can be provided with reasonable effort from all interested parties.  This includes parties from other countries..

If using a life-cycle costing approach to award a contract, the Procurement Documents must state:

• The data bidders will provide
• The method used to calculate the life-cycle cost

It is important to differentiate between Whole Life Costing, Lifecycle Costing and Lifecycle Impact Mapping:

Every product and service has a ‘life cycle’ or number of stages it goes through: from the extraction and sourcing of raw materials such as mining to the transportation of sub-assemblies and parts.  This is often through a global supply chain from the use of products or works and the delivery of services to the re-use, recycling, remanufacture and final disposal of materials.

In the Marrakech Approach, the assessment of these risks and opportunities is broken down in to four key phases:

• Raw materials
• Manufacturing and logistics
• Use
• Disposal or end-of-life management

If you purchase goods or services with specific environmental, social or other characteristics labels can be used as a means of proof.  The label will show the supplied goods or services correspond to the required characteristics.  An example of a label that addresses workforce issues is that provided by the Fairtrade Foundation.

Samples or patterns may be issued or requested from suppliers when you cannot produce a detailed description of the requirement.

It is best practice to keep a "sealed sample" for later comparison with the products supplied. Samples, patterns and drawings may also form part of a design specification.

Any samples that are no longer required should be returned to the tenderer.

Care should be taken that copyright is not breached when using samples, patterns etc. for specification purposes. Consideration needs to be given to the Intellectual Property Rights of the tenderers.

Simplification and variety reduction techniques can help in reducing costs and in obtaining better Value for Money (VFM).

Specification simplification and variety reduction involves removing design complexities.  For example by removing different design types, sizes, grades etc. .

• reduction in the number of item colours purchased
• the sizes of envelopes purchased and kept in stock and

This can be a valuable tool when creating a specification for large collaborative procurements.

You will consider how the contract quality and performance of goods and services of will be measured as you develop your specification, especially an output specification.

These factors should be included into the Management Information (MI) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you require from your supplier(s).  MI and KPIs will be included in your ITT and Terms and Conditions.

It is also best practice that suppliers are contractually required to provide line item spend detail as part of their contract support.

Demand should be regularly assessed In some business areas internal customers or budget holders may under or over specify e.g.   for consultancy services, specifying a Partner when an Associate could deliver the brief: they are suitable and can deliver at less than half the day rate.  It could be more cost effective to have a fixed term appointment than having an interim who stays in place for much longer than the initial contracted period.

In order to avoid scope creep, it is essential to ensure that a robust scoping process is undertaken at the earliest possible opportunity. Otherwise a supplier may offer additional services which are not required. Supplier led scope creep can occur and should be demand managed. An example  is an IT project aimed a buying a records management system which links, shares and allows the updating of records. If a project like this is not fully scoped and requirements understood early on the suppliers may exploit planning gaps.  The supplier may add additional products or services as a problem “resolution tool”.  This would increase the scope, cost and timescales of the initial project. 

The key criteria that the User Intelligence Group (UIG) needs to ensure are met when completing the specification are:

• Requirements are complete and accurate
• Stakeholders’ needs are taken into account
• Future developments have been taken into account
• Consistency with the Organisation’s requirements and objectives.  This includes: business case; relevant legislation; procurement and contracts strategies; sustainability objectives and evaluation strategy
• Risk assessment completed to ensure that related risks are closed or managed