Contracts and procurement

Legislation and policy

Our procurement processes accord with the requirements of:

• Local Government Act 1993 • Local Government (General) Regulation 2021 – Part 7 Tendering • Office of Local Government Tendering Guidelines for

NSW Local Government • Council’s Procurement Policy (including Appendix 2

Interim Direction for Local Suppliers) • Council’s Code of Conduct • Council’s Statement of Business Ethics.

We operate under a centre-led procurement model with a number of systems in place to manage procurement, contracts and expenditure reporting and provide probity guidance. Our Procurement Policy sets out the relevant procurement thresholds in respect of seeking quotations and calling public tenders.

We maintain and report on contract information under Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 Division 5 section 34, on the minimum public access period for contract information on the public register; under Government Information (Public Access) Regulation 2018 clause 217 (1) (a2) on the annual reporting of contracts awarded over $150,000 (including GST); and the Office of Local Government’s Quarterly Budget Review Statement for NSW Local Government - December 2010 section 4.7 for contracts awarded over $50,000 (including GST).

Opportunities for local suppliers

Our Procurement Policy to support the Economic and Social Recovery Plan directs Council expenditure to local businesses on a greater than usual volume through two initiatives: additional scoring for a local supplier that has responded to a public tender, and a streamlined approach to purchasing thresholds when staff engage local suppliers.

This Policy was extended for a further 12 months until July 2022. Our Procurement Policy encourages the purchasing of goods and services from pre-qualified contracts, schemes and preferred contracts in the first instance. We held a Local Supplier Awareness session webinar in June 2021, with Local Government Procurement (LGP), to assist local suppliers understand the opportunities to work with Georges River Council and LGP as a preferred contractor.

Online procurement and prequalified suppliers

We migrated to a new online procurement platform by upgrading our subscription to the Vendorpanel system. This will consolidate procurement activities across the organisation by bringing together the public tenders, LGP, SSROC and our own suppliers on prequalified panel contracts into a single platform. This platform gives more central oversight and compliance when undertaking procurement activities and better data capture for reporting, including spend with local suppliers.

LGP is a prescribed entity under section 55 of the Local Government Act 1993 allowing councils to utilise supply arrangements coordinated by LGP without the need to go to tender. Some of the benefits in utilising prescribed entities are to ensure value for money as well as reduce the costs and risks associated with public tendering for suppliers and expedite councils approach to the markets.

Ethics

All procurement activities must be conducted in accordance with the guiding principles outlined in the Procurement Policy. The principles ensure a set of standards and ethics is applied across the organisation and are as follows:

Principle Description / Action

Safe and Fit for Purpose Safe, sustainable, fit for purpose, proactively planned

Value for Money Consideration of lifecycle costs Encourage competition and innovation Risk mitigation and allocation

Fair and Ethical

Easy to Follow Clear processes consistent with associated risk Concise reporting, compliance and performance, relevant to stakeholders

We share our Statement of Business Ethics with suppliers. It forms part of our public request for tender and/or contract documentation. Transparent decision-making Declaration of perceived and actual conflicts of interest Integrity, confidentiality, probity and accountability

Public tenders, quotations and expressions of interest

For the 2020/21 financial year there were over 100 formal procurement processes consisting of expressions of interest, public tenders and requests for quotation – totalling more than $24 million of awarded contracts.

Some of the significant contracts awarded include:

• repairs to Roof Structure at Hurstville Aquatic Centre for ($2M) • Hurstville Golf Course – Course Improvement Works ($1.1M) • construction of New Players Pavilion at Hurstville

Oval ($2.6M) • construction of Hurstville Golf Club Pavilion ($2.9M) • Lower Poulton Park Naturalisation and Car Park

Construction ($2.4M) • former Oatley Bowling Club Site Remediation ($1M).

Contract management system

We have been maturing our procurement and contract management system since amalgamation and reviewed these functions as part of the risk-based Audit Program scheduled over three years.

Further, we have completed all actions arising from the Contract Management Audit finalised in June 2020 and the actions arising from the NSW Audit Office Procurement Management in Local Government report finalised on 30 November 2020.

Some of the key documents/resources supporting the new contract management system include:

• new Contract Management framework and update of the Policy • new user-friendly Staff Procurement Portal • Procurement champions within each Directorate to facilitate the update of contract information into the corporate system • new procurement planning tools • supplier performance management tools/resources • extensive blended training programs (face to face/ online) on the new framework.

Clive James Library and Service Centre.