Against that most large offices with non-specialist security requirements should be designed so the sockets are fairly generic - plugging into "floor 3 switch 1 port 17" should be the same as "floor 5 switch 5 port 32".
Midnight oil burning is when you're moving the switches, not the endpoints, and you'd not do that for a single desk move unless you'd cocked up on capacity planning.
I don't once recall seeing a freezer alarm in forty years in the NHS. I used to deal with electrical/ heating/plumbing/etc suppliers. Alist of regualarly used items was presented to local dealers for prices. This was done every year. The one that came back with the cheapest became the supplier for that year. There was a supplies department thar did this, I just gave them the list.
Mass purchases was done on a national basis. eg, we used the same soap as the armed forces and the police Large one off items (eg building extentions) went out to tender, three was the minimum.
There was also a list of approved contractors for medium priced items. They had to jump through hoops to get on the list. They were always very keen to get on the list, they knew they'd always get paid and on time.
This sort of thing has arisen since many NHS departements were "contracted out". When I was in the NHS all this sort of stuff was done by in house staff.. There are lots of other examples, eg ?60 to change a light bulb was mentioned a while back.
All so CMDs pals could make money. Same as the Royal Mail scam.
Also you have to include the cost of accounting - matching up and paying the invoice, checking it's billed to the right cost centre, putting new suppliers on the database etc - this can be streamlined for chosen suppliers, but buying a random thing off someone on the internet might well cause more accounting hassle than it saves. Simply handing out a corporate credit card to staff doing the ordering doesn't work if there's any kind of audit or enforcement of purchasing rules required behind using it.
Theo
The figure I remember seeing in the Daily Mail (so it must be true :) ) was £320 and is a result of the PFIs agreed by the Labour government, nothing to do with CMD, but don't let facts get in the way of your prejudices Harry!
On 03/10/2014 18:52, harryagain wrote: ...
I can't say that I ever found getting onto any government approved supplier list particularly onerous.
Getting paid was always a given with government departments. Getting paid on time was not always certain until Maggie Thatcher's government set payment deadlines.
....and monitored performance: departments really, really didn't want to find out what she'd do if they failed to meet them :)
real money or funny money?
I can give you loads of examples of the internal accounting funny money cost of something being 5-10 times the costs of getting someone in from "outside" to do the job.
Butt if you don't pay the funny money supplier, the department providing that service still has all of their costs sitting on the cost side of the company's P&L
tim
It happens that tim..... formulated :
No idea, but she showed me an A4 sheet with costs on. It seems that they wanted to make everyone aware of just how much stuff costs, in the hope that it would make people think twice and ask themselves, do we really need to do that or do we need this etc. Sadly, the £1,000 charge for moving the computer up a floor is the only example I remember.
Outsourced service provideres tend to work on set price jobs - a bigger job may be charged the same. Based on swings and roundabouts. Where I once worked jobs were on a 7 day turn around unless safety critical or project critical. Guess what - jobs were done after 6.5 days most of the time. I believe they tried to frustrate the users so that we would put pressure on our company to buy a faster turn around.
But of course the government either didn't know how to monitor performance, or performance was immeasurable.
Working for Tower Hamlets in the early 90s, my pay became aligned to a series of time targets - answer a letter within 2 days, phone within 3 rings, that type of thing. You can imagine the chaos and piss taking, and the obscene waste of money. My salary went up 20%, anyways ;-)
In our local hospital, the "gents" was very dark. A hand written notice Said "sorry, but light bulbs are only changed on Mondays - that's when the contractor visits us". I hope that if a light failed in an operating theatre, it would get changed a bit sooner.
The gents was lit by a single filament bulb...?
no, one was left, but it was a bit dark.
So whoever wrote the contract [1] didn't apparently know enough to include details like that in it, or they did, and the hospital management is so useless that they either don't have a compliance team or the compliance team is useless. Hmmm, that's the same thing I guess.
[1] The contract should have been written by the NHS. But I could imagine that they allowed the supplier to just shove their own under their noses and agreed to sign whatever that contained.The contract should specify things like time to repair and penalties for non-compliance. Private industry manages this sort of thing very well so I don't see why the NHS can't.
In message , Tim Streater writes
It probably does. But at a price. If you want the contractor to send someone out just to change one 60p light bulb it would cost you considerably for his travel time and costs. Much more cost effective to save up these little jobs for a scheduled visit.
Not necessarily. You may have agreed that certain areas (such as operating theatres) are critical, and that if a blub goes there they have to come out within 60 mins 7x24. You may have agreed that in a toilet with (say) 10 lights in it, they have to come out within (say) 2 hours if more than (say) 4 lights are bust. It's the job of the NHS geezers to think of all these things and put them in the contract. The service provider can then bid against that and say "that'll cost you £xxx per year". Another potential provider may say they can provide the desired service for 10% less. Now who d'ye think should get the contract?
You're merely thinking like a typical civil servant who expects the providers to shove their standard low-quality contract under the NHS geezer's nose, saying "sign here". And then sit back and rake in the profits, saying "but we're fulfilling the contract".
A contractor doubtless would *love* to have it that they charge for each visit. The NHS geezers should be going after a fixed price annual fee against certain service criteria such as I've outlined. Then you'll suddenly find it's in the provider's interest to change all the blubs for long-life ones. And if the HNS geezer has any sense, he'll have clause in there allowing renegotiation of the annual fee if the profit is too high.
In message , Tim Streater writes
And all the providers will say here's a cheaper way of doing it - save up all your non-critical little jobs and we'll come round once a month and do them all in a day. If you force them to try to predict how many times four out of ten light bulbs in the toilets go out they will over estimate and you will end up paying more overall.
I am thinking like someone who has both written and responded to contracts in the private and public sector. You on the other hand speak like someone whose knowledge is only theoretical or second-hand maybe a DM reader.
Contractors are not stupid.
We had a contract with a government dept once to refund any profit over a certain figure but when it came round to it they realised that any incoming money actually went to the Treasury and not to them so they said forget it.
So having decided on a specification for the service that you want, you're now deciding on something else. If you want to do it that way (i.e. have them save the jobs up), put that in the bid spec and have the contractors bid against that as the requirement, instead.
But if you do that, don't then whinge after the fact that you're getting a poor service, and that lights are out all over the place "and we can't get them fixed because of the contract". It's your contract, you decide what the service specification is, you take responsibility for what is then delivered.
In message , Tim Streater writes
AIUI it was done that way.
I think you are confusing me with someone else and you've lost track of the thread.
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