South East Consortium - Who Are We?

We're a not-for-profit central purchasing body working in the public sector.

We create frameworks and dynamic purchasing models for use by our customers.  We're a membership organisation that provides options and solutions for public bodies that are looking to procure their contracts in a compliant and efficient way, mainly focusing on the housing sector, however we work with other public bodies too, such as blue light services and the education sector.

Our relationship centric approach makes us unique as we put the customer at the heart of everything we do.  We make sure we're easy to do business with, solution focussed and we add value each and every time a customer works with us.

That's why we have grown to 57 member organisations that work with us, and we're also used by other customers on a non-membership basis.  We have lots of repeat business, we act differently to our competitors - we're supportive, transparent, credible and we always act with integrity.

We're more than just a procurement organisation

We reinvest our surplus back into the industry through many different ways, as we're passionate about the sector we work in.

We provide a wide-ranging suite of training courses that is heavily subsidised by SEC to both our customers and suppliers.

We engage our stakeholders through insight research groups that work together collaboratively to tackle some of the biggest challenges our peers are facing; by providing guidance and information that is shared with our customers, provided by experts within their relevant field.

We also support our customers' local communities by providing donations to their community projects, charities and services through our Foundations programme which reviews nominations annually to enable us to give back to our members.

SEC are involved with the Cabinet Office and other government departments such as the Department for Energy, Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), Homes England and we've also been appointed as the Chair for the official Communities of Practice for London and the South East - Housing Sector Group.

This means we're at the forefront of helping shape and influence Policy and Legislation.  We also collaborate with other agencies and stakeholders such as The Chartered Institute of Housing, The Housing Forum, Constructing Excellence, RICS, CIOB, The National Housing Procurement Association and many more.

We run different events for our members, suppliers and wider network that include topic specific conferences, product launch events, alliance networks and our annual conference.

Our Annual Conference is the 'go-to' event for all of our network and has been held at the London Stadium in recent years.  This has grown in content and delegates and is something that the sector talks about for a long time after the event!

What we do in the Operations Team

We provide solutions for our customer's procurement and technical needs throughout all stages of their projects.

Public procurement is legislated and for projects that are over the Government set thresholds for works, services and goods procurement can be lengthy, a drain on our customers' resources and expensive.  That's why we offer more efficient routes to market that are quicker, easier but most important of all, compliant with the legislation.

There are four key areas of the operations team here at SEC.

Our technical team offer expertise, advice and services to help prepare our customers for their upcoming project.  They create specifications, cost models, provide advice on asset management, leasehold consultation, review pricing that's received from tenders, offer market intelligence on trends and patterns and market conditions and they offer training on contract management, schedule of rates plus lots more.

Our offer is based upon providing ease, options and value and one of our unique selling points is that we'll always make sure we're compliant and so are our customers.

We procure frameworks covering a wide range of different disciplines from decarbonisation, internal and external building works, consultancy services and compliance.  Frameworks provide a faster route to market for our customers because once we've procured the framework we've completed a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of the over threshold procurement stage.

We create specifications and cost models, and assess the quality and financial standing of our suppliers to create a shortlist - meaning our customers can be safe in the knowledge that we've tested the market and utilised our buying power through our reputation within the sector.

Procuring a framework can take anywhere from 12-18 months which is also the same amount of time that our customers could take with their own over threshold procurement projects.  So we've completed the hard work for them!

We also create dynamic purchasing systems or dynamic markets that allow more specialist suppliers to be accessed by our network.  These are dynamic as they allow for suppliers to be added at any time and also means our customers can ask their preferred suppliers to join it so they can then bid for opportunities that are advertised on the relevant dynamic model.

Our customers benefit from our frameworks and dynamic models as they can then complete a mini competition or direct selection with our selected suppliers that have been tested for suitability and quality.  A direct selection process can be completed in as little as 3 weeks and a mini tender can be completed within 12 weeks - which saves them a lot of time and money overall.

Our customers benefit from our procurement expertise, support and advice throughout the procurement process, and we help them throughout all stages including pre, during and post procurement.

Our aim is to act as an extension of our customers' teams offering advice on tender documentation, evaluation processes, assisting with moderations and finalising awards in a relationship-centric approach.

Our vast network includes lots of different stakeholders from different organisations meaning we collaborate with them and seek different ways to grow and improve our offer.  Our aim is to be innovative and create solutions for customers and help our sector tackle the various challenges they face.

We do this by attending different working groups, meeting and connecting with external stakeholders and partners, moving towards obtaining our Gold Standard Accreditation, delivering training on procurement, working with government departments on influencing and shaping policy and reviewing external factors to help inform our customers and revise our own strategy and offer.

The Future Vision for The Operational Team at SEC

Our customers rely on us to provide the services outlined previously and to help them navigate changes in the market, the legislative landscape and our support and insight into the sector's biggest challenges.  We've grown our organisation steadily over the last 5 years and we're focussed on creating dedicated teams for the 4 operational areas.

We're seeking to supercharge our three areas in procurement by creating dedicated roles to lead and manage our teams to create resilience, flexibility and build even further on our relationship-centric culture.

The three senior manager roles will lead in these particular areas and work with the Director of Operations to ensure our teams are complying with processes, delivering exceptional customer service, managing and delivering our products as per the procurement plan, engaging with our supply chain, developing and implementing new products and collaborating with our network partners to deliver on strategic requirements of our services.

These roles will also be key in motivating their teams, creating individual development plans and making sure we're investing into our teams both individually and collectively.  We're dedicated to supporting growth and development of our staff and we have demonstrated this through supporting and financing training courses, mentorship, coaching and even creating our future leader's programme.  It's key that we build on this further and inspire our staff to ach