Founded in 2008. The Landscape Juice Network (LJN) is the largest and fastest growing professional landscaping and horticultural association in the United Kingdom.
LJN's professional business forum is unrivalled and open to anyone within within the UK landscape industry
LJN's Business Objectives Group (BOG) is for any Pro serious about building their business.
For the researching visitor there's a wealth of landscaping ideas, garden design ideas, lawn advice tips and advice about garden maintenance.
Replies
Its a bad mentality to have, and says alot about the quality of service and competency of the procuring organisation in my opinion.
We've been sucessful with our commercial work through valued business contacts and therefore we tend not to have problems in that marketplace. This is major, profitable focus area for us.
However, the local authority marketplace (Borough, Town/Parish Councils) is what I was interested in hearing more about from any LJN members that perform this style of work.
We have invested time and money and are getting 'bites', but conversion rates (when compared to commercial) is much, much lower as they are under specific tender rules...
Question for Phil, how did find tendering for local councils in the days before you escaped across the channel ???
The biggest issue for smaller businesses tends to be the size of the contracts. As a general rule of thumb they will not award a contract to any business where the value of the contract exceeds 20-25% of that company's annual turnover. For 3 year contracts divide the total value of the contract by 3 and then check it doesn't exceed the %.
Large national firms tend to win the work and then obtain unskilled, inexperienced labour to deliver much of it, particularly in the maintenance arena. Regrettably this results in poor quality. Depending on the contract this may never come to light or if it does will take time.
Regardless of how good the company who wins the contract is, once it is up for renewal they are obliged to put it out to tender again. There are different 'rules' for different sizes of contracts so at the smaller end (under circa £100k) they can shortcut the process by seeking a number of competitive quotes rather than going through the whole OJEU process. However, many choose not to.
Over the years public sector bodies, including housing associations, have tended to roll work into larger and larger contracts to reduce their administration. Their argument is that it's easier to deal with 1 company than multiple organisations e.g. less invoicing. For example a local housing association here recently came out to tender to maintain the gardens and open spaces of all their developments across the North West and Sheffield. If they had broken this down into localities it is quite possible that a local firm could have won an area such as Bolton or Manchester. Instead it will go to a large company and probably a national.
Here in the North West we continue to campaign with public sector to think differently about how they divide work into contracts. Smaller local firms tend to care more about the quality of the work as all their work tends to be in the locality so their reputation is vital. A small contract can help to keep a small local business going and as they are local they tend to spend most of that money back in the locality - this aids economic regeneration/growth in the vicinity. But it's an uphill battle!
We don't hold any local authority contracts but we do hold school contracts. As these are relatively small the schools can circumvent the process which means that renewal is painless too.