How Successful Social Housing Clients Partner

How to use the toolkit

The toolkit draws on a wide range of partnering experiences and knowledge but it cannot tell you where and when to start the new approach. Only you can take that decision in terms of your own organisation’s needs, procedures and culture, and in consultation with your supply chain and stakeholders.

The format used in the toolkit is set out from the initial Business Case to carrying out a project and then moves on through a range of key issues or points in a broadly sequential arrangement.

The essential elements of partnering addressed in the Toolkit under the titles listed below will give you the benefit of the practical experiences of leading housing clients who have adopted partnering as a way of meeting their business needs.The messages are supplemented by examples from work in the field and by up to date references on current policy, practices, tools and techniques.

However there is no one right way of starting to partner. The only right way for you is what suits your organisation best. You can start wherever you are and whenever you are ready, as illustrated below:

• Many successful housing partnering projects have started after competitive tenders had already been obtained and followed by a post -award project partnering agreement.
• Others have started after a previous contract awarded by price tendering was successfully delivered, and the same contractor used again under a new arrangement.
• Others have started with clients and consultants only, and then the arrangement has been extended to contractors.
• Some have started with main contractor taking the lead by advising clients on the basis of their experience with other clients, and then extending the arrangement to consultants and key members of the supply chain.
• More advanced organisations who have been developing partnering over a number of years have set up long term strategic partnering arrangements.