The bedrock of Britain’s nuclear defence programme is Trident’s Continuous At-Sea Deterrence (CASD). The principle is that at all times, there will be at least one nuclear submarine at sea on patrol. However, a recent National Audit Office (NAO) report…

This is the second of two articles on the subject of the role of Intelligent Client Function (ICF) teams in managing the all too often complicated supplier/client relationship. The first article was titled ‘The 8 Intelligent Client Functions Skills to…

Radiotherapy is crucial to the treatment of up to 40% of all cancer patients. However, it’s recently been reported that deaths may well have resulted from radiotherapy equipment upgrade delays experienced across the NHS. It seems that radiotherapy assets –…

The perception of honesty and integrity in the outsourcing sector has been shaken in the wake of the negative media coverage of Serco and G4S and the announcement on 12 Dec. that both firms lost their tagging contracts. While many…

At Best Practice Group, we regularly get involved in established commissioning partnerships that are in dire need of revitalisation. More often than not, a client will seek out our services with the aim of dismantling their commissioning contract with minimum…

According to a Gartner survey, 53% of organisations that have outsourced reported challenges relating to a lack of project/programme management skills. Or to put it another way, they had no experienced outsourcing governance. When considering outsourcing, the creation of a Governance Team is…

There is an unfortunate mistake that many organisations make when first considering strategic commissioning. That mistake may seem so small as to be irrelevant, but it can make all the difference between a successful long term partnership and a contract…