Contract types
GSL operates a variety of different contract types within the sectors in which it is active:
- Private Finance Initiative
- Public Private Partnerships
- Local Improvement Finance Trusts
- Conventionally tendered contracts
GSL’s approach to partnering
Partnership between GSL and our customers is established very early in our bidding process and continues throughout the life of our contracts. This relationship is fostered in a variety of ways:
- An early engagement with the customer’s team to ensure that the services are tailored to their requirements. We like to ensure that we approach the process in a collaborative way, based on openness and trust
- Through the design and construction stages, customer representation is achieved through a close working/partnering relationship that ensures an agreed set of mutual objectives and establishes the optimum solution for the project
- Early development of a Partnership Charter that sets out how we intend to manage the contract and develop the partnership
GSL believe that partnering is a process, and that within a service delivery context, partnering is essential to the delivery of mutual objectives. Our proposals and service delivery solutions are developed to support this philosophy.
In particular, we have developed a management and staffing structure aimed at building and maintaining relationships with our customers’ staff and management.
We approach each project as an opportunity for a dynamic partnership based on collaborative and constructive working relationships. We view collaboration between ourselves and our customers as the cornerstone of success and have developed our management structures, supply chain and commercial arrangements to reflect this view. In particular, we strive to achieve the points illustrated below in relation to collaborative working.
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Partnership charter
We believe in having a common understanding of best value and a strategic vision, which enables GSL and our customers (as stakeholders) to develop and agree a Partnership Charter.
We recommend that the vision for any new partnership is developed and agreed via a series of workshops. The Charter is then subject to review over time, but it provides the first important step in understanding and communicating the goals and ambitions of the partnership.
CBI report
The report is the first in a series of CBI publications describing the impact of public-private partnerships in the UK over the past decade or more. While no-one would claim that the development of PPPs has been without its challenges, it is clear from the evidence that competition and contracting out have brought significant benefits to the reform of public services and are serving the public well.
The report demonstrates that alongside new investment, the introduction of contestability and contracting into the delivery of public services can, if structured appropriately and delivered well, stand as one of the two pillars of public service reform. It is frank about the challenges facing the private sector as well as its successes. GSL is a member of the CBI.
The CBI summary report is available to download.