The Red Review - How are things going with the New Procurement Act, with Rebecca Rees
In this episode, Jeremy is joined by expert procurement lawyer Rebecca Rees from Trower & Hamlin to pick through the New Procurement Act's implementation, its first 60 days and where it might go from here.
Find Rebecca Rees on LinkedIn - Rebecca Rees
Transcript
[00:00.4]
I'm Jeremy Brim and welcome to the Red Review podcast brought to you today by Growth Ignition, the Transformation Consulting and Enabling tech business. All in the work winning space and the Bid Toolkit, our online bid process and guide. So welcome to the Red Review with me, Jeremy Brim.
[00:19.9]
We've got episodes coming thick and fast, but an important one I've been meaning to do for a month or so. So, new Procurement act and how it's going. So I'm joined by my, my friend Rebecca who we had, I was just saying off camera, a really well attended or watched episode last time around on the run up to the act and so we just wanted to catch up on how it is.
[00:44.8]
So hello Rebecca, welcome again. Hi Jeremy, great to have you along again. Thank you for making the time and so if you wouldn't mind, Rebecca, can you just give me a little bit of an introduction, background your current role for those listen or haven't managed to listen to the last episode on this.
[01:02.5]
Yeah, thanks Jeremy. So still the same role as last time. I haven't been sacked yet. So my name is Rebecca Rees, I'm a partner and I head up our public procurement practise at Trous and Hamlins, which is an international law firm headquartered in London, but we specialise in local government, housing and wider public sector at work, which obviously includes public procurement.
[01:30.8]
Very good. I keep referring people to you and I keep forgetting to ask for my, my, my cut of it. It's great to, great to have you along. Rebecca's my go to person on these things. So, so a brief overview, Rebecca, because some listeners might be playing catch up or, and, or not fully understand what's taken place towards the end of February there in terms of what was the new Procurement act or what is it and what was the journey?
[01:59.7]
Up to it just briefly and then we can get into what's happened since. Yeah, no problem. I mean I think for people that aren't self professed procurement geeks like me and you people may have passed by the Procurement act at the end of February, going live.
[02:19.9]
So post Brexit, Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings wanted to seize back control of the public purse and indeed the rules around who we spend our money with and how we get to the marketplace.
[02:36.3]
So first out of the blocks on rules reform was the Procurement act and it started off with this consultation paper that you and I mentioned last time, transforming Public Procurement and that culminated in the passing of the Procurement Act 2023 and that has ostensibly reformed the tendering rules that public sector bodies have to comply with when they spend money with suppliers.
[03:15.2]
That's been supplemented by procurement regulations, which are basically a different set of legislation, or a supplementary piece of legisl that sets out a lot of detail. We also have a National Procurement Policy Statement now, which sort of sets out what the government wants to procure to achieve when it spends its money.
[03:39.0]
So things like social value, drive for net zero and sort of achievement of apprenticeships, training and skills opportunities as well. So I would say what we have ended up with is quite a complex landscape.
[03:57.1]
There was this overriding agenda of simplification that they wanted. I don't think we've quite landed there, but we can come on to that in a minute. But also the reason why you might spot that it's the Procurement Act 2023 and yet it didn't go live until February 2025, is that two reasons, really.
[04:19.8]
We got a new government which delayed things, but also the benefit of the delay, or not the delay, but the transition period was that the Cabinet Office wanted to train up and frankly shift the culture of public sector procurement officers by upskilling them, allowing them to get to grips with the Procurement act through E learning modules, these courses called deep dives, which were three days intensive procurement training, so that the procurement decisions that they make within the rules can more likely produce good commercial outcomes.
[05:07.6]
So that's the landscape, I suppose, it all went live February 2025. I would say that in the weeks or months leading up to it going live, there were tonnes of tenders, and I'm sure you saw that, Jeremy, you're probably knocked off your seat by them now.
[05:31.5]
What that means is that actually all of those tenders that came out Before, I think 5.30pm on 21st February will be covered by the old rules. So I think I'll be seeing out my career, even if it runs to time, using both the old rules, which are the Public Contract Regulations 2015 and the Procurement Act 2023, and I think for public sector buyers, but also suppliers, including SME suppliers alike, they will still have to be up to speed with both sets of regulations for a fairly long time into the future.
[06:20.6]
Wow. Yeah. So a bit going on there. So how did the implementation go? I mean, certainly you mentioned the policy statement, which was an important kind of steering device that only came out the week before the go live date, didn't it?
[06:40.0]
A few days before. And so it all felt. And the electronic platform they're using for tendering was a bit squeaky towards the end, and it's a bit of A bumpy ride, was it? I think, like all good things, it's a bit.
[06:57.0]
We all have geography project syndrome, isn't it? Like last thing Sunday night. We really need to focus on producing it. I mean, let's pick it off one by one. Central digital platform, I mean, central government IT project. What could possibly go wrong? There are a lot of moving parts and aspirations for the central digital platform.
[07:18.2]
And I was at a client's supplier engagement day yesterday. She was quite nice to be sitting back as a supplier and listening to the client and they were expressing frustrations with the central digital platform not being maybe as useful as they want it to be, or it could be.
[07:39.1]
So I think there are probably gremlins in the system and we know from a document published last year about the central digital platform and how it's going to increase in functionality as it goes on, that there are going to be three phases or certainly three kind of sets of information that it sort of seeks to encompass.
[08:06.3]
So although it's probably quite unimpressive now, its functionality and its use should only get better over time. So we wait to see it, of course, and there will be frustrating, as I've said, gremlins until then.
[08:23.7]
But for me, that really, you know, the success of the central digital platform will be the. The litmus test of the success of the Procurement act, because I think that transparency agenda is so important to government and so sort of central to the principles and.
[08:49.0]
Or we're calling them objectives now, but objectives and the processes under the Procurement act that it has to work and it has to allow bidders and suppliers to access the information that frankly the Procurement act and the policy statement assumes that they will be able to access.
[09:09.2]
Yeah, there's also. The other side of the coin was, wasn't it meant to drive some efficiency for the suppliers so you just upload your SQ stuff once? Yeah. So it's interesting that a certain public body, the biggest public procurer in the country, is still asking people to fill in an SQ and upload that as well.
[09:27.0]
Well, I think so. So there's going to be two things, actually. So there's what I'd call the evidence locker, the tell it to me once bit. And I understand that that functionality isn't. Isn't great at the moment, but should be going forward. You've still got this issue around conditions of participation, so information that you can ask bidders that we would have asked previously in a selection questionnaire, and you'll see that there's a procurement specific questionnaire template on the Cabinet Office website, not great because it's too generic.
[10:04.7]
So we are developing, you know, ones for clients at the moment that pick off the technical and the legal capacity to perform contracts. Now, that stuff won't be on this central digital platform for quite a while.
[10:23.2]
So I think, you know, suppliers need to understand that there will be two places to add information. First on the cd, I keep on calling it cdp, but you'll forgive me for the acronym Central Digital Platform. And then they will have this, what's now called a psq, a Procurement Specific Questionnaire.
[10:44.3]
So again, I totally take the point that it was supposed to reduce administration, make it simpler for bidders, but my kind of sort of argument all along has been that we're going to have to change what we do in order for that to happen.
[11:07.4]
Because from my point of view, suppliers are already having to get to grips with an entirely new legislative landscape, an entirely new vocabulary. Yep. And my guess is that in reality you'll be giving the same level of information for each procurement.
[11:31.6]
So until that evidence locker appears and is functional and useful and used by clients, you know, I don't think bidders will notice much difference in the system. Yeah, interesting. Well, I guess, like all things, we'll go on a bit of a journey with it, won't we?
[11:49.7]
But hopefully we can get there in a year or two and get those efficiencies. But like I say, the transparency and the pipeline data stuff that's meant to come in terms of what we can see as suppliers moving forwards is really quite critical, isn't it?
[12:05.3]
And it was a good step, it was the right thing for government to do. Hopefully it's not like pipeline stuff in the past that you get it and half of it's actually already being built and all that kind of thing. Hopefully it is actually forward facing. Yeah. And there's a big thing on LinkedIn at the moment about pipeline notices and whether you just need one for the entirety of a public sector body spend or whether it's going to be one per opportunity.
[12:31.2]
I think regardless if it's one or many, as you say, it has to be forward facing. It has to be live opportunity or, you know, live or future opportunities, as you say. It shouldn't just be a record of speaking spend, but I, I don't think anything beats sort of that proactive, you know, approach by buyers to the market.
[12:57.3]
I think that there's too much sort of latency in the system whereby clients don't actively go out and say, right, who is my market? Yeah, yeah. What else is being required of them at the moment, how many tenders have gone out, you know, how can we build capacity in the supply chain?
[13:20.3]
How can we future proof? Because it's all very well and good giving you a yearly contract, but does that help your business model? Does it help you grow? Does it help you invest in your staff and your, you know, R and D or whatever? So I think that there's a lot on the client side, which hopefully all of this kind of transitional training that's been going on should encourage clients to think about.
[13:47.4]
So think about the pipeline in a more strategic manner and it. And from the market. What does the market mean? It's interesting. Sorry, on that. It's just interesting. One of your competitors, actually, on LinkedIn, I've been having some headbutts with about exactly that sort of thing.
[14:04.7]
So it's nice that we're aligned, actually, because I wondered if I was going mad. But no, I don't think we want one notice for everything. I think we need the data to be able to genuinely engage and see what's coming. And you're bang on in terms of clients providing a form of certainty.
[14:23.9]
So we can then invest in innovation, in our people, etc. Which is sorely lacking at the moment in the construction sector. There's lots of people being made redundant at the the moment because those larger employers, they can't see the pipeline at the moment, or they know that there's fruit in the orchard but it's not ripe is the way they're putting it to me, and that's a bit unpleasant.
[14:46.8]
And so I hope with spending review, we can push through that in the next couple of months and drive things on and the transparency data will then help give them confidence and we can just get on with it. I'd hoped that they could just get a direct awarding some work just to keep things moving.
[15:05.6]
We'll see where it goes. So what are we finding then? So how's it going? I guess so where are we now? End of April, so we're a couple of months in. What are we finding? How's it going so far? So, as I said in my introduction, I think a lot of clients have got runoff tenders under the old rules.
[15:26.6]
So really there's a lot of business as usual going on. And then really I've got two types of clients, as in public sector buying clients, which is one saying there is no way I'm touching anything with a barge pole until I see someone else go through it from cradle to grave and see if they get challenged or what are the problems and what's their lessons learned from that?
[15:53.4]
And then I've got others saying, look, this is what it is, we have to find our own way through it. There is value in making our own way through it and figuring out what Procurement act means for us and how we want to grasp the flexibilities.
[16:12.0]
And so we've still got tenders, you know, going out and we have done since the end of February. A lot of clients have said, right, this is the new normal. They prepared for it before February and now they're going out and tendering.
[16:29.0]
So I think there is a real mixed market out there at the moment in terms of culture and, and, you know, risk profile of clients. But also that is something that suppliers are going to have to navigate and under the Procurement Act.
[16:49.3]
But it goes for the old regime as well. You know, docu, the procurement documents are absolutely key because that's the first touch point where bidders are really going to see the detail of what they're being asked, what hoops they're being asked to jump through in order to win the work.
[17:09.7]
That's even more important for the Procurement act because there's slightly less legislation and provision around the detail of the process. And of course, I am sure we will see a lot of free form jazz under the competitive flexible procedure with people being asked and all sorts, you know, so, so, but bidders will really have to take note of the, the process that they're being asked to participate in and whether they think it's worth the candle.
[17:45.5]
Because I can see there being a real risk of over engineering the process. So, you know, whenever we're involved in something, you know, it's proportionality, keep it lean.
[18:01.6]
You know, you're not in procurement for procurement's sake. You're in there to get to contract, to capture the value, get into contract and deliver it. Yeah, yeah, because we, I, I do advise in my bid writing course actually, but I also advise clients that that cost of sale does have to be proportionate to the margin you're going to make in the deal.
[18:23.2]
And there are so many public buyers who just have no concept of that at all, you know, and just procure frameworks with like 100 suppliers on it. And when you do the maths, no one's going to make any money. And so that, that, that balance, that proportionality has got to be right, hasn't it?
[18:39.6]
So are there any unintended consequences we're seeing so far? So I, I'd put that to you as a Theme because I've got. I've got a client of mine actually who smaller builder and maintenance business down in the south coast and they've got lots of clients who are schools and local authorities for smallish stuff that are now having to put stuff out to tender that perhaps they would have just been there, three quotes or something before there was a lot of sort of angst about the new act and what it was doing.
[19:09.9]
Their clients were suddenly a lot more focused, trying to be a lot more regimented about their approach. But what are you seeing in terms of sort of unintended consequences? I mean that's really interesting actually because the scope of the act hasn't really changed. So buyers that were covered before are covered now and vice versa.
[19:30.8]
If they weren't covered before, very unlikely that they're covered now. That was supposed to be a steady state. And really the thresholds haven't changed either. We have this kind of biannual recalculation thresholds include VAT now whereas pre Brexit they excluded VAT or our membership directly to the gpa.
[19:55.0]
So that's interesting in its sense. I mean the whole value of the procurement reforms for me was that A it showed people how central procurement is to everything that.
[20:12.0]
But B that it is an enabler and that you can or should be using it to achieve something not just as a tick box kind of administration process. So I hope that the reform. One of the consequences, unintended or otherwise, is that procurement is known, I.
[20:33.7]
E. What is it in the first place, but also that it's seen as a value add function rather than just an overhead or a cost of a business. But unintended consequences. I think everybody wanted templates because they wanted it to be easy and off the shelf.
[20:54.7]
I mean, for me that's the wrong emphasis on procurement. But I would say that because part of my job is to create documents, I think the templates. I've seen a num. The. The templates being used in a wrong way at the moment. So I think that they're. It is a problem there.
[21:11.9]
Unintended consequences. One of the unintended consequences is a very legal one I think which is in the combination of all of the different types of procurement regulations.
[21:28.8]
So think defence utilities concessions, public sector regulations, the consolidated regulations slightly tweak some of the tests on paper for exemptions, for example the TECAL exemption where perhaps they shouldn't have done and therefore we just need to navigate those more carefully.
[21:56.3]
I think the new rules on dynamic markets, that is old dynamic purchasing systems will be rethought. I mean, the Cabinet Office has said that from a public platform, I think open frameworks practically will not
[22:21.5]
produce the efficiencies that perhaps people were looking for and address the problems that they were seeking to address in terms of, you know, falling out with contractors, contractors not bidding or going insolvent, particularly in the construction sector, or, you know, changing requirements not being fully encapsulated in the frameworks.
[22:48.1]
Not too sure open frameworks will particularly address all of those problems, particularly the ones we see writ large in the construction sector. But broadly speaking, I would say that the benefits have outweighed unintended negative consequences at the moment, just because it has got people talking, people kind of interested and able to kind of flex their kind of muscles in terms of just focusing and investing time in, well, what makes a good procurement.
[23:27.3]
Why are we doing this? Yeah, absolutely. So you've obviously had a busy year with all of this stuff going on. You were in that week when it was going live. You were everywhere. Webinars and podcasts and all sorts of stuff. It was great to see. But such a procurement tart.
[23:43.1]
That's it. Absolutely. Why not? So what types of things are clients asking you for help with now off the, off the back of it is work sort of ramping up as people need some help with this thing? Yeah, I mean, I'd say we are drafting a lot of procurement documents, so invitation to tender procurement, you know, for the open and the competitive flexible procedure, procurement specific questionnaire.
[24:08.8]
I think where it's worked well is that, you know, we've invested in it as well. So we, we've automated the invitation to tender. We quite like it. We're looking at AI tools and how to use those in procurement. So again, I think that that's kind of boosted it.
[24:24.9]
Clients are also asking about contract management and, and this is what I'm most interested in, because as a procurement lawyer, I've got no interest in disputes. Okay, so that's not me. I also, I mean, I was a projects and construction lawyer once, so I did contracts until they were coming out of my ears, but I don't really do that now.
[24:47.2]
But what always frustrates me is that all of this value is like captured at procurement and then it's supposed to be delivered. All this value that we've got, all those tender promises, all of that social value, added value, you know, brilliant people coming to work for us, all of that kind of unique selling profile and products, you know, are all laid out in procurement.
[25:15.2]
And then there has been this kind of generational pride of them putting the contract in the bottom drawer and never referring to it again, it just irritates me to the highest extent.
[25:30.7]
So the fact that the Procurement act now goes into the commercial life cycle, it sets out these KPIs and it says, look, contracts over £5 million, you've got a denote three, at least three KPIs.
[25:47.7]
You've got to monitor them, you've got to measure them and you've got to report against them publicly in one of these notices that will come for the CDP annually. Now, look, KPIs, like anything else, aren't an end in itself, but if it's a reminder to a client to dust the contract, get it out of the, you know, bottom drawer and actually look at it and deliver that value so that it can get the information back from the contractor and against those damn KPIs annually.
[26:18.4]
Brilliant. Because actually, what we have a dearth of in the public sector is good contract management. So, you know, and, and people always say, oh, oh, we didn't get what we wanted last time you did at the point we awarded, what then totally failed to happen, was for that contract to be managed in any meaningful sense, for you to deliver the tender promises.
[26:43.2]
So for me, that's like, what, you know, that's the passion at the moment, that is, you know, focus. How are we going to deliver those procurement outcomes across the life cycle of that contract and then feed it back into the procurement cycle so we're not repeating mistakes?
[27:05.7]
Yes. No, that's fantastic because you're right, the amount of times you win a deal and then just go and do what you were going to do anyway or whatever, I see it on the supplier side all the time. The clients sort of forget to challenge you on these things and like you say, keep you to your promises.
[27:22.4]
In fact, in a previous life, I used to coach partners at a business to actually make a commitments, register and stick it at the front of the bid. You know, through our proposals, we'll make these commitments and you can, you know, score us against these in a monthly contract meeting as a, you know, to sort of debunk some of our competitors that were selling a dream and then, you know, delivering something else.
[27:45.4]
So that's good. So I think last time we did make a point actually about how capture is important for suppliers. Get ahead of opportunities with clients, using the new transparency data to work with clients to shape their thinking around how to procure the service.
[28:01.4]
Procurement shaping together sounds like that's even more important, particularly if Some clients have got the jitters about doing this stuff. You know, if we can get on the journey with them and then take them through the procurement, get awarded and then go and deliver the thing, that sounds like a smart thing to do.
[28:24.9]
I mean, there is one thing, you know, there's a word of warning in the fact that more cautious clients are very, you know, reticent about engaging with their market because conflicts of interest, accusations of inappropriate kind of business relationships, etc.
[28:42.5]
So, and particularly for local government where it is highly politicised, you know, that that kind of message of arm's length is writ large. I think in terms of training and culture, we need to get past that to say, actually you can have real meaningful pre market engagement with named specific bidders that don't represent the entirety of the market and still structure a fair, open and transparent procedure that doesn't, you know, skew the outcomes towards those engaged bidders.
[29:22.3]
But not to do it because of that risk. It is still, you know, we see it a lot, it's the norm. Yeah, no, I'd agree. And I spoke at a YPO procurement conference pre pandemic and was a little bit sort of provocative because the amount of times, can you imagine.
[29:45.0]
So no, I, I said to the audience of like 300 odd procurement people, just run a hackathon, you know, just get, ask us how to do it two years before you need to procure something. Just get a bunch of us in the room and say, right, we want to do this stuff.
[30:01.2]
We think, what do you think is the best way to deliver this? And just crowdsource the best ideas and help that, you know, use that to shape your specifications. Because the amount of times you receive tenders from clients with specs that are bang out of date or you're five, five years behind the thinking always I, I get clients, I, I, I, I, I end up having some fairly difficult conversations with commercial directors in construction quite often who are rightly really upset.
[30:29.4]
I've got a client in particular who've come up with an approach to construction for parts of the public sector, which is miles ahead of most of the market. It's, it's efficient, it's lower carbon, it's safer.
[30:46.0]
And yet they constantly get tenders from their key clients that are the spec that they bid last time, five years ago. And it's like, well gang, we've worked with you to develop a lower carbon, faster, better, cheaper, safer approach and you're not putting that new spec out to market.
[31:02.3]
You know, what is that about? So just Ask us how to do it. And because, like procurement, people are rightly scared of people like me and you think we're trying to flog them stuff or have them over or whatever, and sometimes that might be true, but if they can create an environment where they're just asking us to help them solve the problem and then take that away and help that inform their thinking, get everyone in the room or do a poll or something, because it's ultimately, as I was arguing about with one of your competitors on LinkedIn, was basically saying he advises his public sector clients now to give as little feedback as possible to unsuccessful bidders.
[31:43.2]
I said, that's really cool, mate, because I advise my clients to not bid to shit clients who don't give you any feedback. So my clients, who are the highest performers in the market, who deliver the greatest outcomes for the public purse that we're paying for as taxpayers, won't work with your clients.
[31:59.6]
And that's the right answer, but you're providing the wrong answer. So, you know, anyway, I could go off on one all day about that, but we need to collaborate better and find the right way. Yeah. And it's interesting you say that, because I think some of my arguments with the Cabinet Office have been, you know, the reform team's absolute kind of mantra that the New Procurement act and the way we do procurement in the UK now has to guarantee good commercial outcomes for the public sector person.
[32:31.5]
They keep on saying, rebecca, it's not about legal compliance. So to your point, it's not about, you know, not giving useful feedback to mitigate risk to your client. If your client has done the evaluation process well, competently, then you should have no fear from giving full and frank feedback because, you know, a lot of.
[32:57.6]
And, and to my clients, you know, the risk of a disappointed bidder challenging you is not because you trip up or make an honest mistake, it's where they think you're hiding something or it was a done deal to start off with and that feedback has been engineered to hide a kind of pre engineered decisions.
[33:19.1]
So. Yeah, yeah. Which is. Which is of course what I help my clients create. But anyway, that's a, that's another story for another day. We're kind of on the opposite sides of the argument with that. I'll move on. So what, what do we think the next year looks like then? Sort of final bit.
[33:34.9]
What's. What do we think the next 12 months will look like living with this thing or in this environment? So, I mean, we mentioned the National Procurement Policy Statement just briefly and obviously There's a new central government social value model out which is sort of more of the same really.
[33:54.3]
I don't particularly want to focus on that but that the National Procurement Policy Statement is what I call the procurement football. Right. Now that the adults have left the room, we've left Europe. What's procurement for?
[34:09.6]
Because it's not about creating a common market across Europe anymore which underpinned procurement. It's whatever the government of the day want it to be for. So we had, you know, June 2021 we had the.
[34:26.1]
Well, who was that? Johnson probably that it was his mpps. We were just about to get one under Sunak when he called the snap election. So that was. Yeah.
[34:42.4]
Then Georgia Gould came in and has produced a new kind of mission based National Procurement Policy Statement. So you can see that when the flavour or the colour of government changes you we will get a new National Procurement Policy Statement.
[35:02.8]
My thoughts on that are really that the two that we've had thus far are quite similar. There are some additions, refocusing, etc. But in terms of apprenticeships, training and skills, a diverse supply chain, net zero and social value, there isn't that much more policy that we're going to be procuring or achieving through procurement.
[35:31.5]
So it will be interesting as we go through to see that. But that's a political football and. And that will change. Not hopefully this year there's only so much excitement a girl can take. But what we will get is, and I hesitate to say this because, but we've seen it in the Ministerial statement when the MPPS did come out is we'll be getting a consultation on a Procurement Act 2.0.
[36:01.8]
So we've been promised, yeah in the next couple of months that we will be consulted on some more legislation. And actually, I mean, listen, do we have the stomach for it? Maybe, maybe not.
[36:19.1]
But there are things that aren't right in the Procurement Act. It was a really ambitious project, you know, to, to combine all of that legislation into one to move it forward.
[36:35.2]
You know, there's nothing on AI in there. There's nothing really about innovation. We think they've got dynamic markets wrong frameworks aren't that useful. So there's some interesting bits that we might want to reflect upon.
[36:52.9]
So. So anyway, end of June, beginning of July for that. So that will keep us busy. There's always a bit of news, there's always a clang, clack, clang, clang bit of news with you on these things because that's could do without it to be honest. But all right, fair enough.
[37:08.8]
We'll have a look at that when it comes out. June, July, you say? Yeah, I think so. And then where are we? I mean, February, March, April, May. So what? June, July. For the first open procedures under the Procurement act to come to fruition.
[37:24.4]
And I really want buyers and suppliers that take part in these new Procurement act competitions to feedback and do public case studies, even if it's just published on LinkedIn.
[37:40.3]
Like, I ran a competitive flexible procedure or an open procedure under the Procurement act, and this is what I learned, or, you know, I participated in it. And these are the top five things you need to be wary of as a bidder.
[37:57.5]
Because I think, as I've said, you know, the whole reform agenda has, you know, flushed out all of the procurement geeks. There is a lot of conversation on LinkedIn and other platforms, and I think that all of that conversation is.
[38:16.0]
Is good because it raises people like skill and capacity and vocabulary just to discuss all of this and it. And that must, you know, increase the quality of what comes out at the end.
[38:32.9]
Fingers and toes crossed. Well, that's a great place to leave it there for this time. So we. We may well do some more stuff to put together. Rebecca, we're just investigating some things in how people are applying some of this and some of the other things going on in procurement. But for this time, thank you very much.
[38:49.4]
It's been really helpful. Again, thank you. Oh, you're really welcome. It's always lovely to speak to you, Jeremy. Thank you.
