Project Case Study
Designing an infrastructure procurement strategy for TradeMark East Africa
Ensuring TradeMark East Africa's procurement strategy is efficient and achieves the best value for money possible
TradeMark East Africa seeks to promote flourishing trade, strong investment and lower levels of poverty across East Africa by encouraging rapid advances in the region’s integration, trade and global competitiveness. It focuses on increasing market access for local people, enhancing trade environments and improving product competitiveness.
Regional trade is commonly inhibited by inadequate infrastructure. Poor road quality, for example, means goods are difficult and expensive to transport, locking people into a much smaller market. Ineffective and overcomplicated border posts mean goods are delayed as they move along key trade routes. Addressing problems like these is a high priority for TradeMark East Africa.
TradeMark East Africa is looking to procure US$200 million worth of infrastructure projects between 2012 and 2016 in an effort to rectify the infrastructural problems inhibiting trade in East Africa. With such a large volume of infrastructure procurement to take place, it is vital that the organisation has appropriate value for money procedures in place which adhere to international standards, and that its procurement processes are equally strong.
In 2012, TradeMark East Africa contracted us to design standard bid documents for the procurement and management of suppliers in infrastructure, advising the organisation on the best policies and processes for the procurement and management of infrastructure suppliers, advising on how to interact with Country Procurement Systems in client states, and advising on resource allocation in order to administer these changes and minimise risks in procurement.
We approached this using a ‘life-cycle’ format, which considered the procurement process as a circular set up that tracks projects from the project planning and design phase, through contract management and evaluation, eventually coming back to the goals of TradeMark East Africa from which it was initially envisaged. Our approach means our procurement projects create best practice outputs, which lead to significantly improved procurement outcomes.
We also integrated value for money systems into the documents and advice we supplied, ensuring that TradeMark East Africa’s entire procurement process was best-positioned to interact with the donors, suppliers and governments with which it came into contact, whilst retaining the best interests of the groups of people it was ultimately looking to support.
