About the SECE

South East Centre of Excellence – Building Construction Workstream

In 2003, nine regional Centres of Excellence were established by the Department for Communities and Local Government to support local authorities’ procurement strategies and help them achieve the efficiency targets set out in the Gershon Report.  Based on the successful experience of its own framework arrangements, the Council was chosen in 2005 to lead the SECE’s building Construction Workstream. This encompasses 74 local councils plus other public sector bodies such as the fire and police services across the south east. SECE is also actively working with a number of London Authorities.

A dedicated professional team of project managers and procurement specialists has been set up to lead the SECE Building Construction workstream.

SECE’s major focus has been the introduction of collaborative forms of procurement for the benefit of all potential users. The first significant procurement the SECE Major Framework, introduced in 2006, is now the largest and most advanced procurement arrangement of its type for local government and has a wider application within the public sector. In the first 10 months of operation, SECE has attracted active interest from more than 25 local authorities with combined projects worth nearly £900m. Of this total projects worth almost £400m are now proceeding. The success and principles of the SECE framework have also attracted attention from adjacent regions and national programmes.

As well as a major framework SECE is introducing sub regional frameworks around clusters of authorities. Procurement of frameworks in two of these clusters in Hampshire and Sussex are currently at an advanced stage. SECE is also intending to procure a range of complementary consultancy services later in 2007.

The key themes for the SECE Building Workstream have been:

• access to reliable professional advice
• developing arrangements that work either regionally or around clusters of authorities
• sharing and developing common project delivery mechanisms
• collaborative arrangements developing some reliable models to build ‘buy in’ and longer term commitment

For more information about the South East Centre of Excellence, please visit www.sece.gov.uk