Flexible Printed Electronics

I have wittered on for the past couple of years about the exciting prospect of flexible printed electronics as a result of working for PETEC, part of CPI in the North East of England.  What this basically means is that surfaces all around us can become video displays or solar cells.
The BBC technology programme Click has just run a section on this as developed by Plastic Logic as part of their Paperless special.  You can see it here. on iplayer.  It might not be up for long, and might not be accessible outside the UK.  The relevant bit starts about 9:32 into the programme.

SMEs still miss out on Public Sector Contracts

Today's Yorkshire Post (Thursday 8th March 2012) contains an article about SMEs and public procurement with extensive quotes from me.   My summary is that the government is talking a good game but more needs to be done to make sure it actually delivers the engagement with SMES that will benefit our economy.

The article is here

Government becomes an office landlord

The government has just announced a scheme where empty office space in public sector properties will be leased to small businesses.   The aim is to encourage entrepreneurship, and strengthen the small business sector whilst helping to generate income from public properties that will otherwise sit idle.  These are laudable aims, but I have strong reservations about the scheme in practice.

Firstly, the government is setting itself up in competition to private sector commercial landlords.  I don’t know about in London, but in much of the country there is no shortage of commercial space available at low rents and flexible about the size and duration of the lease.  It may be a big problem in London, but it is not in Leeds where the scheme was launched, or Bradford where I am based.  In fact there is a problem of too much space chasing too few tenants.  The government offering their surplus space, whilst a reasonable commercial proposition, is likely to end up undercutting the commercial offer (by offering better facilities, infrastructure. decor etc. for the same price) which in the end may lead to a lessening of total space available and in the short term may drive some commercial spaces out of business.

Enough sympathy for the landlords (sorry Ben and Helen, who provide my office space).  The bigger worry to me is that the government is sending a message that start-up businesses need formal office space.  Some do – but they can probably look after themselves.  Obviously manufacturing tends to need dedicated premises, which is one reason it is so hard to start successfully.  Service industries, including retail these days, often do not need their own office until they are large enough to pay for them at commercial rates.  New businesses are often better setting up from the kitchen table or garage until the cash flow is strong enough.  I was based at home for nearly 10 years.  People starting off in business are sometimes seduced by the glamour of setting up, when what they need is to strip out anything that does not generate cash.  A website is a much better investment than an atrium.

Feel free to disagree.

Good news/bad news - Procure4London

The local authorities in London are banding together to procure collectively.  This should achieve the twin aims of reducing costs, and making it easier for smes to bid for business (though not necessarily to win business).  The site went live on 9th September 2011 - see here.

Why do I say good news/bad news?  Well partly the point  I made about about whether this will help smes.
But secondly, it will be another portal.  Opportunities are already supposed to being shared through ContractFinder, and many London opportunities (not just Olympic opportunities) are going through Competefor.  The original intention was to have Competefor as a legacy of the Olympic Games.  That probably died with Glasgow 2014 decided not to use it, but it seems a shame not to use it for this opportunity.  There may be issues I do not understand but it seems from here like a duplication of effort - and cost.

One step forward, one step back...

Changing EU Procurement rules

The government has signalled its displeasure at its inability to award the ThamesLink train contract to Canadian company Bombardier Transportation in order to support the train manufacturing facilities in Derby.  Instead the contract has gone to German company Siemens, who will in return create 300 jobs in Hebben, South Tyneside.  In total some 3000 or so jobs are at risk in Derby, and a campaign to overturn the decision has seen well supported marches, and angry questionning of government minister - see here.

I have pontificated about the decision in other places on the blog, but in principle the decision is right (if unfortunate).  The government really has no choice because of EU procurement legislation, which it has hinted it would like to change - no easy task.  Luckily there is a review of the rules in process (kicking off in earnest next year) and the UK government would like to know our views and gain our support in changing the current legislative framework.

There is a paper about it here.  Some of the proposals seem a little anodyne, but that is understandable - you don't want to go into a difficult negotiation with all guns blazing.   The specific changes suggested include;
- higher limits, quicker processes, measures to exempt 3rd sector organisations from some of the legislation, and to increase (in reality create) opportunities to negotiate with suppliers.

If you have an interest in public procurement in the UK, and Europe, and strongly suggest you have a look and let the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, know what you think, and what you would like to see changed.  This is an opportunity, and we should all take it.  Rather than complain about what the rules are without doing anything about it, let's engage and see if we can get any improvements. 

But don't hold your breath - the chances are the process will be slow, and the changes incremental.

UK Government Spending

My friends at BIP Solutions have just sent round an e-mail highlighting their Tracker Spend Analysis service.
The most interesting part of the e-mail is too look at how much money the government has spent so far this year - see quotoation below

With a total spend so far from January 2011 of £146,003,754,510.17 – it is anyone’s game!

So who has spent what?

Central Government £99,389,430,852.30 Local Government £15,682,819,570.67 Emergency Services £78,629,500.56 Non-Departmental Public Bodies £3,114,832,048.07 NHS £27,738,042,538.57

So year to date we are at £146billion, (or £146 000 billion if you are in the US), and on track for round about £200bn by the end of 2011.  That is a lot of money.  But is only about £2.5k (at the moment) for each person in the UK.  Note that the NHS spends almost twice as much as all the councils put together, and that Quangos (while spending a hefty £3bn) are really only a couple of percent of the total - getting rid of them will not make a big difference.

So, if you are a small business interested in supplying the UK public sector, remember there is a lot of opportunities to target - even if the total spend is due to come down in future.

And if you are not then it is worth trying to understand where the money is going.

Government support for SMEs

The latest Business Link Newsletter has come round, outlining what the government is doing to support SMEs - in particular in winning business from the government. The news is mixed, and as always with governments of all persuasions contains a mixture of real initiatives, hope, aspiration, spin and the rehashing of existing initiatives as something new.

Large businesses are encouraged to pay smes quickly. This is laudable, but without any real government push behind it is essentially just a wishful idea. Anecdotal evidence is that larger companies are pushing out their payment terms, essentially banking with their sme suppliers, confident that their suppliers are desperate for business. SMEs generally would be happy if their large clients paid on time. Quicker payments would be a real bonus. Quicker than 30 days is probably unrealistic. 30 days exactly would probably be fine for all.

The pressure on major contractors to government to make quicker payments down the supply chain is welcome, but needs some real teeth. When suppliers are dropped for failing to pay sub-contractors they will take real notice. Until then they will pay lipservice until they feel it is safe not to do so. Publishing the data on a website is also to be supported as a general principle, though I am not sure what will be achieved. The public are not interested, and the SMEs already know, and I am not sure that shame will be sufficient. In fact you could argue that the shareholders will be pleased to know that contractors are pushing out payment terms, and therefore increasing their returns.

14 departments have eliminated the PQQ process for low value tenders. This is valuable for SMEs, though as I have argued long and weary a similar benefit could be achieved by all departments using the standard OGC PQQ template for all tenders. Then SMEs would only have to fill it in once. It could even be stored on government servers - as was tried in the One Form initiative in St. Helens. Back in February Robert Peston of the BBC pointed out that eliminating the PQQ process was not a sure fire way to get more competition - see here.

Contracts Finder continues to limp along, and is not really finding traction. The private sector alternative services seem to be able to provide a more extensive service, and so are (if not thriving at least) continuing. The number of contracts published seems low compared to the long standing equivalents in Scotland and Wales. Scotland are trumpeting the fact that their service is now publishing more opportunities below the OJEU threshold than above - which is of real relevance to SMES. It seems like there are lessons to be learned from the existing services.

Contracts Finder has lead to 600 contracts being let to SMEs since February - about 150 per month. Hopefully this will accelerate. The value is over £80m, which means the average contract was for £133 000, or about the OJEU limit. This is fine for some SMEs, but is very large for the smaller SMEs and micro businesses. Real success would be to get that down to, say, £50 000. Then opportunities would be be accessible by even the smallest businesses.


The 9 winners of the government's Innovation Launch Pad Product Surgery competition, out of 350 SMES were able to pitch their ideas to government. Laudable in itself, but why a competition over 3 months to pitch these ideas? Why not a series of Meet the Buyer events which would have allowed all 350 to pitch? The winners look like interesting businesses, of real benefit to the country. However many of them are existing suppliers to the government, and were pitching products that they already sell to the government. Hardly the sort of innovation that we need in these times - they should be being promoted by standard practices. One winner (Learning Pool) has saved the government £30m over the past two years - why do they have to pitch again? Why are they not being rolled out as best practice? More information here. A good idea, but again more needs to be done.

British Science Festival in Bradford 10-15 September 2011

The British Science Festival is coming to Bradford in September - see here for details.

As PAWA consulting I have no involvement with the Festival, but I think it is important to help promote British Science and Technology. And it is relatively unusual for such events to come to Bradford.

Hopefully this event will gain some good media interest, and attract some kids to science as well as explaining science to interested members of the public.

British Manufacturing

Evan Davis is making a very interesting series for the BBC, called Made in Britain.
It is often said that British manufacturing can no longer compete with the rest of the world, and that in Britain we do not make anything anymore. This series is showing how completely wrong (and self defeating) that view is.
The first and Second programmes can be accessed here - the third is about services.

A very brief and selective extract is to make the point that Britain is the seventh largest manufacturer in the world. That is hardly "does not make anything". If we accept that the USA and China are numbers one and two, and that Germany and Japan are three and four (at least for the moment) then the best we could hope to be if fifth. Being seventh shows that we are a bit behind where we would like to be - not hopeless. It is like complaining that because as Aston Villa we are not in the Champions League we cannot play football - not true (if we leave the views of Birmingham City fans out of this).

The thing is that once you start to believe this self defeating mantra it becomes self-fulfilling. I have made this point about the UK chemicals industry until people are sick of hearing it. The Chemicals industry is the UK's second largest export - but industry people keep saying it is dead, in terminal decline, not like the old days etc. etc. Of course their business is doing fine, in fact it is growing and they are expanding - but the industry is over, we can't compete..... They practically all say it and end up talking themselves into a pessimistic funk. Heaven help us if the government takes this gloomy myth as reality and acts on it.

One thing British industry needs is to stop running itself down. It is big, successful and there is room for improvement. But it is not over. The people who repeat this ad nauseum have an agenda that Britain is a busted flush. It is not. 7th out of 200 nations is grounds for neither giving up nor complacency.

I look forward to working with more successful British manufacturers in the decades to come.