rather madden bonkers swimmers who are going to swim to Scotland very shortly they are the gout and open water swimmers well some of them anyhow it's a group of six actually that are going to swim the North Channel in eight of Charity it's a six-person team and they're going to swim for an hour at a time as part of a relay and they are let's see current Crawford's a slaggo native but she's been here now to Kenny so long I think we'll just call her one of her own and she's going to be joined by Rhea Daugherty from Baldy Buffet, Mark Lockridge from Letter Kenny and there's also Schneed Diver who is from Dunlowe, Sarah Brennan who's a GP based in the Kerry Gart and then a Garvin McCann from a dairy so a good geographical sweep. Mark and Karen have joined me now in the studio for a wee chat about this good afternoon to you both afternoon all set and ready to go but the thing is you don't know when you're going is that right that's right they give us a window of a week and then we're sort of sitting waiting I'll give us 48 hours notice about when we need to get up the road to Dunlowe. When you say they this is the sort of the governing body that determine the rules and make sure that you do it right is that it or is it? We're going with an organization called Infinity Channel Swimming and they have all the knowledge all the expertise all the safety all the experience they're doing this as a regular occurrence so they know they have the boats and everything so okay so the the window opens Saturday midnight and then you have until July the 2nd all right so you've got a and you just just wait for the optimum time the optimum conditions but Karen why are the well I imagine the conditions are so important because you don't want to be out there and something windy but tides play a part to do they? Tides play a big part in this so we will be going at high water so at high tide from Donahadie and then the outgoing tide tends to push you north and then the next tide brings you south and then hopefully you get into Scotland and we're aiming for something between 14 and 15 hours so each swimmer will swim at least twice and some swimmers will swim three times so it could be you know 3 a.m. call to swim all right you mentioned the other tides some tides pushing you north others and pushing you south so it's very important that there's somebody keeping an eye on the map and saying listen you've got a you've got a veer right or yeah yeah so all our role really is sounds very simple but our role is just to swim and we we rely on infinity channel swimming to you know get the tide right get tell us get the route right so in one way just having to swim is good because we don't have to site because the boat will do the sighting for us you follow you follow the boat yeah you swim parallel swim parallel to the boat so it's up to the whoever's in the boat to keep the boat right following the boat and we have observers on the boat Irish Long Distance Swimming Association observers so watching what we're doing so there are particular rules for swimming the channel so you know the takeovers are very important when one swimmers getting out and the next swimmers getting in you can't even touch the swimmers can't give them a high five no no none of that otherwise you're you've ruined the whole thing what's that about to be just shake their hand or give them a high five but you have to get out of the rope that be able to get out of the water is that it think that's it and it's just it's just that it's a continuous swim all the time so we're going to go with those rules I say there's an observer on the boat the pilot and the crew on the boat will also be keeping an eye on us and of course our own bodies we have sort of tasks and roles on the boat you know when we're not a lot of eyes on us which is great you know a lot of people watching you know and looking out for one another yeah it's been that's so important just the sea temperature is pretty nice at the minute that's it but you still if you're in for an hour you need people just to be keeping an eye making sure you're warm when you get out and fed all of that looking after each other but this is one of the joys of the gang over the years with garden open water swimmers we do look out for each other in fact open water swimmers just tend to do that they look out for each other wherever you are and I'm presuming everybody's you know done the training and and you know when you're fit enough you figure that you're capable of doing an hour or two hours or whatever it's going to be one of the things that you have to do to our qualifier that's just going to get to that yeah the what's involved in the qualifier so it's it's about swimming for two hours in your swimsuit and your one hat and goggles in water under 14 degrees everybody has to do everybody has to do that 14 degrees under 14 degrees yeah because the chat the North channel in particular is one where the temperature of the water can be a little bit cooler than other channels so the infinity channel swimming need to know that you're capable of doing an hour in that water and you're not a risk to yourself and the team yeah that's it the last thing you want to do is attempt to butcher it for everybody yeah yeah alright so the apprehension now and it's a waiting game it's a waiting game yeah yeah so I suppose now just to take the opportunity to say thanks to our families who sacrifice quite a lot in letting us do this and our swim buddies so yeah looking forward to getting to Scotland and celebrating then afterwards we just realized no in this is probably coming close to our 10 year anniversary since we started doing this sort of crazy stuff together and Karen was saying when we should do something big to mark 10 years like kind of thought this is not big enough don't know what plan she has for for something bigger but it's not the first you know decent swim that you've done because you've you know swum like from Rathbone over to Ench and various places and that but this this will be the longest will it this will be the longest in total yeah even though it is a relay and I suppose it for many of us it'll be the biggest challenge or the biggest adventure swim adventure we've been on yeah it's the fact that we have to get back in a second time maybe a third time and perhaps part of the challenge is also sitting around for five hours in the boat yeah waiting your turn staying warm staying ready focused and and is that the way they set the rules you have to do an hour at the tank you wouldn't work in it a half an hour wouldn't work no a minimum of an hour some some relay teams would choose to do two hours or more but we're choosing to do an hour yeah yeah just want to mention to you know lots of people are an inspiration to us but I'm a reward in particular yes probably set the scene for open water swimming in Donnie Gaul and in Ireland so she's done the north channel yeah solo so long wow put it in perspective when you remember that yeah people do this solo and we're doing a little relay and nonetheless and we're also raising money for the Samaritans and so we have an I donate site which people can find on our Facebook page garden open water swimmers so that that's also helps us as we're swimming you know to say listen we're raising money for for a good cause so we chose the Samaritans because it has an all Ireland you know focus and it's a good good charity to help people in terms of their mental health absolutely so it's just a waiting game now and you could I mean what's what sort of notice do you do the do they give you I think I get 40 at ours notice you know it's not too bad too bad no so the bags are packed and the food and yeah ready to go as well yours might be and so it's almost been part of the fire service just that you don't know when you're going to get the call and if you go and well listen the best the best luck to all the team you guys swim pretty much all year round you we used to cold water as well as yeah yeah it's something that I suppose we started doing two or three years ago I'm saying if we could keep going throughout the winter and at least for me it wasn't an act of bravery so much to go without the wetsuit as an act of laziness I couldn't be bothered with the hassle of getting into this thing getting out of this thing washing this thing drying this thing you know so you swim without a wetsuit yeah is this one without a wetsuit yeah so the rules for this are one swimsuit one hat and a pair of goggles and that's it nothing else that's your kid that's your kid yeah I don't know why I thought but there would be swim there would be a wetsuit involved but there you go and so when you're swimming like when you're swimming here and you're doing open water swimming through the winter would you wear a wetsuit yourselves no that's I mean I stopped wearing it because it was too much of a hassle too much of a winter in the winter yeah but to find people want to wear I think if you're starting out it's a great thing to wear out we wore one starting out and then I think we just got lazy I think that was it and then found another joy in just being in the ordinary swim costume right well yeah I'd be cool getting into the water even at the height of summer so the thought of getting in during winter without a sweatsuit well by all means wear wetsuits wear trunks whatever you enjoy I think it's just to enjoy it open water swimming is done it goes a fantastic place to be doing this you know it's just stunning the scenery is great and the water is great there's beaches everywhere there's lakes it's magnificent yeah we're anyway listen and both you and and all the rest of the team and you have an experienced head on the boat as well in the form of Paddy Vaughn Paddy is our main crew so he'll be supporting all of us on the boat yeah yeah so he knows everything about about us and our swimming and about what we're gonna do we'll be a fatal at the odd shout out of you know it's Paddy in a sense one of my introductions to this I remember when I started this way back about ten years ago something about wood quarter and there was a man standing in the pier making sure we all get out safely and keeping an eye on us back then and that was how I first met Paddy Vaughn so very good with no better man to have a log that the best look and let us know how how you get on only too glad to make some make some announcements about it and it's raising money for this Samaritans there's an I donate page which is very important thanks thank you thank you Charlie McLafferty funeral directors serving letter Kenny and the surrounding areas for over 100 years Charlie McLafferty funeral directors and our family to care of your family and guide you through 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sible that would be helpful and if we draw us back to the 2014 act which is what we're scrutinising this morning I'll take Colin Beattie to be followed by Brian Little Mention has already been made of procurement as a vehicle to measure costs or even reduce costs We've heard that goods and services which perhaps costs more up front may over a period offer better value for money How to what extent are you able to make decisions which are informed by calculating that whole life value of the product or service that is being provided and are there any barriers to that and maybe Gordon I can ask you to come in first Yes I think again it's a case by case basis where it's appropriate to consider a whole life costing we'll do that we'll build that in we'll consider that over a 10 year life period or the natural duration of the arrangement and consider that as part of our overall award criteria so that I guess is how we build it in in terms of barriers to doing that I wouldn't raise any specific barriers other than it takes time for our experts in procurement to work with the commodity advisory panel to understand what those life cost implications would be and to build them into a scoring mechanism that allows you to be clear in terms of the reasons why somebody was successful but equally clear in the reasons why somebody was unsuccessful and I think that's always the challenge Colin in terms of people say to me why did that why can't you award to that company the answer has to be well you have to be able to explain to all the other unsuccessful companies why they're not successful so that brings you back to something that has to be quite clear and that would be the challenge of making whole life costing consistent clear fair and equitable and transparent to everybody the whole of the public sector is under pressure cost wise is it is it not true that perhaps this whole life costing and so on is less adhered to simply because of the short term need to save money to stay within budget to reduce costs doesn't that put a lot of pressure on it I think what we're trying to get is consistent sustainable outcomes and I said that support our patient care that ultimately if we get that wrong then that increases cost of the service so I think what we have established is a way in which we can consider all of the different parameters that build up to make a decision on which is the best product to buy and that's what we follow it would be we wouldn't be moving towards a point where it was price only that wouldn't get the outcomes that we need for our patients in terms of whole life costing I mean similarly to as Gordon just said we did try and do that to the extent that we can obviously we try and build up cost models which would take in the running costs and the end of life disposal costs and that kind of thing so try and build up a picture of what's the total cost of ownership of a particular product for instance so I think we do try and do that as much as possible I suppose in terms of the challenges I guess one of them is the modelling of that kind of thing things can start to get quite complicated sometimes it's alright if you're doing a sort of product installation maintenance disposal type of thing and you can kind of show that over a number of years but if it starts to get overly complicated then you kind of run the risk if you start to try and factor in for instance energy costs that it might cost how much it might cost to run but then it's difficult to predict what the energy costs might be in x years time and then again as Gordon just said in terms of explaining to a supplier that they may have lost out on a contract because of this model that you've built that model obviously has to stand up to a decent amount of scrutiny so it tends to play on the safe side of things but I do think to your point earlier in terms of the short term thinking I think as a sector we're reasonably good at the medium and long term but I think there's certainly a bit of the year on your budget type of thinking which sometimes stops things stops people if people don't necessarily have the budget in a given year to take the product that might last them several years then they might take the decision to kind of renew something every year or every couple of years where actually if they were able to they might prefer to spend the money to buy something that would last the longer but as I say sometimes kind of annual budgets can sometimes stop that kind of long term investment to be like and perhaps either Robert Joe I think just a high level response to this as quick as possible is that if I start off at the upper level what Joe's touched on already is how transparent and clear can we be about the outcomes that we're seeking and I guess being the type of organisation we are we deal with some decisions that we have to make today for tomorrow but we make decisions that we're making today for well well past tomorrow in terms of that long term activity as an infrastructure you know utility and I think just to touch on Stephen's points we have models that will model out that longer term journey that we're on and then if I can fit that and the visibility of those outcomes with the procurement that Joe runs then that's where we get out of the I guess the cycle of short term decisions affecting some of those longer term outcomes that we're seeking clearly again value for money for our customers is important at that and unlike the annualised side of this from a water point of view we're in the six year regulatory period and we're already starting to look at the implications for the next period and beyond as part of our strategic planning so I think that the short answer is the more we can link transparency of outcome visibility of likely work we can balance that with our investment appraisal process which will give us the right solution which then hopefully allows us to procure both for the short, medium and long term to get that value for money Let me just go to a slightly different subject which is we've heard a lot about framework contracts and lotting now how much of experience been how much of a challenge is it to make these opportunities accessible to smaller and maybe regionally focused firms while sharing the risk and ensuring the good value it's quite tough Gordon I'm going to come to UNHS We do use lotting I'd ask this question before we came we had 46% of our national contracts have lots in them some of them are broken down into very small lots are specific to product types some are split into regional lots by health board region so lots of food contracts are in those areas and that's to encourage and allow access to smaller packages of cost and more specific requirements so that's how we establish it I think sometimes it is still a range of bidders for the individual lots I think the example was given was in terms of milk we brought that down to lots for every health board region in Scotland but awarded to one supplier because of the lack of competition as a Scottish supplier so that was good but there wasn't many small businesses and one of the reasons on reflection I think our team have said that different organisations have different businesses so other big milk providers might do doorstep delivery type services other words focus more on creamery cheese areas so that there's a small number of suppliers in that particular example so we do try and do it and we do try to encourage as many suppliers as we can to come to it other ones we will have a single lot but that is by the nature of the product and it still is able for businesses to to compete for it we've just actually awarded a contract for imaging equipment and we have a new Scottish SME who's now come on to that contract competing against some of the large multinationals so it will be interesting to see how we're going with those and to help that to help that general award of business we've just shown tell a couple weeks ago and along at Ingolston where the suppliers have come met with 70 of the seniors of consultancy consultant medical technical staff from Scotland to see what the suppliers can offer and encourage competition one of the things we've been hearing from witnesses is how difficult it is to access how complex the procurement process is how do you tackle that? how do you tackle that? particularly so for small companies that don't have the huge resources to be able to put together complex documents or the experience in it I've seen the submissions we've had and we have our supplier development programme we have our Scottish supplier group which we meet with we meet them just in the autumn there we are going through a process through colleagues in the Scottish Government to re-procure our procurement our procurement systems so the e-procurement Scotland and our public contract Scotland tenders is going to be re-procures we have an opportunity there to work with our suppliers to ensure we get systems which are more user friendly so that's a piece of work that's going on going on just now and hopefully that'll help and make it reduce some of the barriers to entry and digital solutions is the way ahead to make that easier but in other spec we are procuring complex products and services and we need to make sure we get that right so they won't by the nature be straightforward and simple contracts or tenders just by the nature Stephen just to briefly add to that in terms of if you see what's going on in our frameworks as well but I think just to to add to what Gordon was saying I think one of the key things is obviously around market engagement so it's around understanding supply markets and being able to structure lotting based on market intelligence and I think it's also APC has been around for several years now a lot of our frameworks are going through their fourth iterations and I think it has been an iterative process in terms of how we structured things the first time we did them and then the second time the learning from that and then we're getting on to the third and fourth and hopefully we're getting better at doing more I can think of frameworks that we've done where the first time we tried to lot something maybe the geographical lots were too broad or the category the way that was split by category was incorrect the better knowledge and understanding of the market then you can start to tease out more and better competition because of better structuring but it has been a sort of a learning process but I think market engagement is one of the key things Scottie Froger in terms of lotting we do use lotting but I don't really see it in the same way we try to look at what outcomes that we're trying to deliver and then build the procurement around that so we tend to use lotting sparingly with 70% of our supply chain SMEs we've got a lot of SMEs so what we've really had to do is to desensitise the procurement process a little bit and acknowledge the fact that we have to spend more time helping these businesses to engage with this and be part of our community so we've had to really pivot in terms of normal procurement versus SME procurement and learn about that and change the procurement and change the questions and change the support network around them so we will actually go out to the Highlands and the Islands we will actually visit organisations and we will actually sit in our kitchens if necessary and actually help them which we've done in different communities so whatever's necessary to help these businesses to become partners into Scottish Water Supply Chain that's what we will do so less about the use of lotting more about rolling the sleeves up and helping the SMEs to get into working with Scottish Water is our approach Thank you You've been a still good morning I was just checking I wanted to actually look at a practical example of this idea of up-front costs higher up-front costs potentially delivering or should be delivering a better long-term result and I can't think of anything that's more relevant Mr Beattie than the deliver of the food that we give to our patients and the last time I looked at this in any great depth there was a huge disparity between NHS boards around potentially a hospital's ability to prepare food on-site or where it seems to be going with development of facilities where food is prepared off-site and brought in surely it must be really difficult to procure into the NHS the size of the NHS you know locally prepared locally produced food and locally prepared food I'll try and answer that our part of that pieces is to secure good quality product through our national contracts and we do that a number of ways we've explained that we tend contracts in place for fresh meat fresh milk etc we also have main suppliers who have supply chains that we are able to nominate products on to so a couple of examples that I was saying in terms of how do we get quality built into this is that we have example we wanted to create a source of sustainable haddock we engage with a sustainable fish provider in Aberdeenshire our team were up there they went on the trawlers they agreed with the supplier what they wanted and the fish has landed fresh into Aberdeen its process in White Hills which is near Bamfyn and then provided through our main contractor into our Scottish supply chain so that's an example of how we can work quite closely with local businesses and bring that food into our supply chain that then is drawn in by our catering teams from across Scotland and put into the mix in terms of the way in which they provide catering to the hospitals another example would be in terms of the good food nations bill we work closely in Fife we have a requirement for a new baker coming in in Fife and we've been working closely with them in terms of that supplier development helping them with tendering and supporting their input to tendering and again we link them into the main supply chain the main contractor supply chain so in that way we can support new entrances and requirements so that's generally what we do and the ingredients are then drawn down by our catering managers who are the experts in terms of what they need to provide the food requirements in that area I think again I'm going to go back to this disparity the last time I looked at this in any depth we had there are some fantastic examples and you've highlighted some fantastic examples but there's also some issues where food is being plated prepared and plated outside of Scotland as far away as Wales and then driven up to our major hospitals and one of the big concerns in the wastage was around 55 per cent now that doesn't help us to transition to next year now this is not I'm not putting you in the spot here but we have to have a look at in terms of if you're unable to prepare food on site we have to import it and my concern would be we were important some of that prepared and plated in Wales and driven up the M6 so I guess I don't know if I can specifically answer that question in terms of the food coming in from outside the area I need to confirm if that's something we actually do or is that something that's procured locally through our help I'll check that out first of all but certainly what we require is to support our catering teams and ensuring they have the quality of food that's required for our patient needs you know so that's our focus I can't really answer the question on the you're procuring centrally for NHS but local boards have the capability of procuring their own we create national frameworks that people can use and draw down from but if the catering strategy is different within a local health board we may not use it that way so there is that choice I guess I'll probably need to take that back and come back to you with an answer it's more about a catering strategy rather than a procurement strategy so I can certainly ask colleagues who are more close to that to come back and give more information on that it would be real help we want the highest quality food in front of our patients so if there is a way in which we in this place can change the way in which things are done I would appreciate that I'll leave it there if I can if I can, convener OK, thank you very much and it's still a good morning panel I wanted to ask you about public contracts Scotland website it's been on the go since 2008 and when it was introduced it was a really good improvement where we were previously but what's your experience as buyers now using that website and is there anything that you could see that could be an improvement as we move forward Gordon you mentioned that it's currently under review can you say why it's currently under review where were the difficulties you're now trying to address it's kind of a end of life in terms of this commercial tendering contract we've been extending it we, i.e. colleagues in our Scottish Government who are responsible for it have been extending it and we're going to see that coming to an end over the next couple of years and we are doing a national re-procurement of that of those services that provide us with the e-procurement solutions Public Contract Scotland tender the e-tendering system as well as an analytics piece not my direct responsibility but we are we'll work very closely we'll be on some kind of expert panels and we'll help and ensure that we get a modern fit for purpose product okay Steven the same question yeah, I mean similarly I think obviously it's been a sort of a very useful tool that has gotten to this coming to the end of its life I personally don't have much interaction with the tool so I can't give it a sort of a too much of a view but as I say I think we're also engaged in terms of the kind of re-procurement and in terms of feeding in and gathering that kind of feedback from around the sector so hopefully whatever the next iteration looks like will be kind of an improvement again okay and Joe you think you don't use that platform you've got your own e-sourcing portal how does that compare with or have you made any comparisons with Public Contract Scotland website? yeah, we do use elements of it for the hosting of our catalogs so if you can imagine a big Amazon site so all our frameworks and contracts are on a big Amazon site inside the Scottish Government and that allows all our partners and our supply chain ecosystem to all use it so you get amazing compliance because it's all there and everybody likes to use Amazon so we've built it in there in terms of the procurement element of it it's not suitable for utility procurement it's very created around public regulations so we found it, initially we were in it and we found it incredibly restrictive and had a few challenging conversations with our Scottish Government colleagues about how it was restricting our ability to do stuff so we pulled out and away and created our own e-procurement platform to give us the space and the air if you like to be able to do what we need to do within our own regs is there any functionality that your platform has that we should be building into public contracts Scotland's? That's a really interesting question so our platform is really based on invitation to negotiate and it's really quite sophisticated to be able to do and plus to innovative partnerships so we're using quite different types of procurement approaches that a lot of our colleagues in the public sector are not utilising the same so if I had one wish it would be can everybody use the negotiated procedure as a standard and drop open and restricted procedures and put them historically somewhere else because I think public sector in Scotland would generate much more value for money if it actually negotiated and trained its procurement teams to do effective negotiation around that but that would be more plea Thank you I think all bases are perfectly linear I'll thank the witnesses for attending this morning contributing to an inquiry and I'll now suspend the meeting and move on to private session