Ms Kathryn Meghen:

We were asked if any agencies had done procurement in ways that supported smaller companies. The Office of Public Works has done it, as have the Department of Education and Skills and the HSE. The OPW has split projects so that it had a lower threshold for smaller projects. It sets them up with a clear understanding of the nature of the businesses that are tendering. We consistently see that those who put together the tender documents do not know or understand the service or the product they are buying. They are setting the bar too high or are asking the wrong questions. The Department of Education and Skills has a good model which has a very low threshold for very small works and has a ladder process, so that once a company does one project and does it well, it is eligible for a project at the next level up. In architecture we see large practices doing very well with commercial projects here and internationally, but small practices do very small work while the middle is disappearing. For regional development and innovation, unless we have a spread of architectural practices and other construction professionals and contracting businesses, we are storing up another problem for ourselves. The HSE has a system for smaller projects in which it identifies three or four to go on to the framework and then adds a wild card. All the tenders have to meet a certain threshold but it is low and picking out a wild card means newer businesses are able to get into the model.