Reaching consensus without booking a room
Charters Towers were one of the first Councils in Queensland to manage their preferred supplier lists on Unimarket, after previously using the platform to access LocalBuy contracts. They continually take advantage of new features - like advanced evaluations - to improve procurement outcomes.
Tools to support buyer evaluations
Similar to most Councils, the process for evaluating supplier responses at Charters Towers varies depending on factors such as the budget, type of service being sourced, and how technical or otherwise risky the procurement event is deemed to be.
Paul Weston is the Procurement and Depot Coordinator for Council and is responsible for overseeing all procurement activities and decisions. He benefits from having full transparency across the sourcing process, including evaluation of RFx responses.
“[With Unimarket], we now have an audit trail of all evaluations, regardless of the value of the work. And more complex evaluations that require the weighing of multiple factors are easily managed using the Evaluation Matrix.”
Paul Weston, Procurement Coordinator, Charters Towers Regional Council
These evaluation tools, available to all buyers at Council, reduce the time they spend in the evaluation stage and ensure an outcome that’s in line with policy.
Consensus, simplified
As the procurement specialist, Weston often needs to manage a high value, high risk procurement process where assessment criteria expand across multiple speciality areas. These complex evaluations can require input from multiple internal specialists, as well as consultants or other external parties.
In the past, Weston would have to arrange for all evaluators to meet, and would then be responsible for both facilitating the process and recording the deliberations and outcome.
He knew it was possible for the room to be influenced by strong opinions and personalities, potentially affecting the scores and the final outcome. In addition, he felt that the record taking was compromised by his divided attention.
The platform’s Advanced Evaluations capability has eliminated the need to host these time-consuming and problematic meetings. Weston now creates a matrix of all criteria and their weightings, and evaluators review and rate proposals from their desks. Mandatory comment fields provide detail on why a score was given so Weston can easily validate, or clarify if required.
He can also allocate certain criteria to particular evaluators, such as financial evaluation to Finance, operational assessment to Operations, etc. Each provides a score only in their area of expertise and isn’t asked to weigh in on other aspects. This means that the final consensus is representative of qualified opinions only. There is also the ability to group evaluators into teams, such as Legal, IT and Finance, to collaboratively review and rate responses.
The structured but easy-to-follow process has meant that Charters Towers can provide clear and detailed feedback to suppliers when required.
Considering the time avoided juggling calendars to get four or more evaluators into a room, Weston estimates Advanced Evaluations saves the organisation a third of the time it takes to complete a complex evaluation, compared to the previous process.
“I set the criteria and weighting and our evaluators score in their own time. As each evaluation is independent and includes commentary I’m much more confident in the integrity of the process and the final decision.”
For Weston, the once muddy waters of advanced evaluations are becoming increasingly clear.
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Brenton Judge is a Civil Engineer and the Manager of Transport and Drainage at Balonne Shire Council. “Advanced Evaluations has established a rigour that didn’t exist previously”, Judge says, “The outcome, along with how it was reached, is displayed clearly for evaluators so there is no need to communicate back and forth to reach a mutual understanding.”
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Daniel Parker is a Purchasing Coordinator at Richmond Valley Council and is responsible for proving probity in procurement at the organisation. “With Advanced Evaluations”, Parker says, “[I] can monitor the process, and once all evaluators have weighed in, it spits out a report that has all the information I need to take to a Council meeting”.