West Coast Tool and Plant Hire Ltd
Argyll and Bute Council covers the second largest geographical area of any Scottish local authority, stretching for over 100 miles from Appin in the North to Campbeltown in the South and more than 80 miles across from the island of Tiree in the West to Helensburgh in the East. It has six towns, 25 inhabited islands and over 3,000 miles of coastline - more than the entire coastline of France.
Argyll and Bute Council went live with the eProcurement Scotland Service (ePS) on April 16th 2004. Several of the first wave suppliers chosen for the implementation were suppliers of plant hire. Councils which have already implemented ePS have predominantly used suppliers of goods rather than services, so it was obvious that the journey would have its challenges.
A small dedicated project team was formed to manage the implementation using internal and inter-authority resource for supplier adoption, systems administration and change management, the culmination of which was the largest quantity of suppliers formally adopted under the eProcurement Scotland model with catalogue content for the "Go Live" date.
Encompassing Argyll and Bute's strategy to develop small local suppliers, one of the first wave suppliers was West Coast Tool and Plant Hire.
Lucinda Hopkinson, of West Coast Tool and Plant Hire,
with Ian Gillies at the eProcurement launch.
West Coast Tool and Plant Hire have two distinct elements to their business with the Council, namely product consumables and plant hire. The former involves an extensive range of products for which no item level purchasing data or schedule was readily available. The latter involved a smaller range of defined hire services for which the council had controls and documentation process in place. Following the ePS model of formal adoption the decision tree led to agreement, that identification and compilation of an electronic schedule would be the best way forward. Due to the constraint of the project resources and timescale, the electronic schedule creation focused exclusively on Plant Hire. This was advantageous in that the range was manageable to meet the ePS "Go Live" deadline and would provide valuable management information once orders were placed live. However, this meant that the schedule would be for service based purchase orders rather than the traditional product consumable type. In future, compilation of the product consumable range into a suitable schedule will be engaged, a task made easier by experience gained during the initial work.
It became apparent during the initial implementation of ePS that it was a great opportunity to improve existing purchasing procedures and processes. For example, plans are in place, to ensure that once broadband arrives in the area, the current process of sending fax purchase orders to West Coast Tool and Plant Hire will change to e-mail transmission This will represent an improvement for both Council and Supplier.
The creation of the service based schedule presented a number of hurdles to overcome;
- Current practice was manual and time consuming, process' relying heavily on telephone contact. The supplier did not utilize computers much and assistance and basic training in spreadsheets was shared with the supplier to facilitate process improvements.
- There was no unique identifying code (SKU) system in place. Plant Numbers were used for stock control, but this only identified, for example, one of five drills which were exactly the same make and model - a particular piece of equipment, this information required to be generalised to a code relating to any drill and would facilitate an audit trail and electronic catalogue. Unique codes were agreed per equipment type and period (UOM), with the line item detail cross-referencing other applicable SKU's eg. First day refers to subsequent days and weekly hire.
- Due to the procedures and schedule of rates typically used within the supplier's internal processes, each item had to have four entries in the catalogue to accommodate one-day hire, consecutive day hire, weekly hire and any days over a weekly hire. Consideration was given to rates for hourly hire, to overcome partial receipting being unavailable within PECOS, but this would deviate from the industry norm.
- previously no other ePS users had used day and week as a required Unit of Measure (UOM). New Units of Measure had to be added to PECOS to accommodate daily and weekly hire.
- UNSPSC had to be generalised/assigned only to level one as there were many items of plant that could not be found within the ECCMA website, however there is sufficient data contained for management reporting and much more than was previously available.
- often at the outset of a hire period the duration is difficult to define as it is subject to change with the extremes of weather and this issue is compounded by the geographic constraints in Argyll and Bute. The ePS connection option had to facilitate and overcome these difficulties. The electronic catalogue contains a line item for an off hire credit with nil value, so that in the event of rough weather and/or the suppliers availability to collect the equipment results in a requirement for credit there is a facility to record this expectation and subsequent credit within PECOS.
A83 Main Route to Lochgilphead 12 August 2004
- It is often the case that repairs are required during or after a hire and is, again, difficult to define due to variances in time taken to do repairs and also different costs of parts required. This was tackled in the same way as the requirement for a credit - a nil value line item detail within the electronic catalogue, description of price to be confirmed within one week and referring to the comments field for more specific information in regard to the repairs to be carried out.
- Hire Desk training to ensure successful uptake of ePS - user guide and process maps created.
- From these slight problems it could be concluded that there is room for improvement within the system, ie. the introduction of price banding and the ability to enter a decimal place in the number of items ordered would be most beneficial for hire companies as well as quarry material suppliers. However, these challenges/problems were overcome and the catalogue has been successfully loaded and is currently in use by our Hire Desk.
West Coast Tool and Plant Hire's Purchase Catalogue is a work in progress, however any purchases made as non catalogue are recorded in the ePS system and the data captured.
Pecos approves budget upfront, extensions can be done, credits recorded - no blank cheques/open ended orders anymore and less invoices on query. Management of plant availability is more straightforward for the authority and the supplier, whist many processes within manual purchasing have been highlighted for improvement, which will also be of mutual benefit.
Argyll Forest Park
More Information:
To obtain further information relating to this article on The Argyll and Bute implementation of eProcurement Scotland service please contact:
Argyll and Bute Council -
Lynsey Ford, Supplier Adoption Officer, e-Procurement Project Team
Telephone: 01546 604173
e-mail: lynsey.ford@argyll-bute.gov.uk
West Coast Tool and Plant Hire -
Lucinda Hopkinson
Telephone/Fax: 01546 602992