Who writes your building’s shopping list?

Imagine you are redoing your kitchen. You ask someone to draw up a list of what you need: units, appliances, lighting, sockets. Then you ask several suppliers for prices based on that list.

Now imagine that the person who wrote the list also sells kitchen appliances.

They are not lying to you. Their list may well be excellent. But they chose the size of the fridge, the type of hob, the brand of the oven. And they know better than anyone what they can supply you with, and at what price.

In a building it is the same, only much bigger

A school, a care home or an office building is run by a computer system. It controls the heating, ventilation, blinds and lighting. In the trade, it is called the BMS, for building management system.

Before it is installed, the owner has a specification written: the precise list of what the system must do. Then several companies compete on that basis. This list commits the building for thirty or forty years.

So everything is decided in the list. And nobody is really in charge of writing it: often, whoever takes care of it could also bid on the tender, either directly or through a closely related company.

One question to ask

Do not ask the person writing your specification “Are you independent?” Everyone says yes, and in good faith.

Ask instead: could you bid on this tender?

In public procurement, the law knows this problem well. It can exclude from a contract a company that helped prepare it, and sometimes even a company closely linked to it. When that happens, it is the owner who pays the price: appeals, delays, a procedure to be run again.

A rule in one sentence

Whoever writes the list must have nothing to sell in what they write.

It is not a question of honesty. It is a question of interest: it is hard to write a list that does not favour you when you are also on the list of suppliers.

The question, asked of ourselves

Since 2019, Workswell has done two things. We write specifications for owners, municipalities and institutions. And we also sell metering services, products and software for buildings.

So we asked ourselves the question. The honest answer fitted in two words: partly, yes.

Nobody had reproached us for it. But asking others to ask themselves the question without asking it of ourselves first would not be serious.

What is coming

We have made a decision that concerns ourselves first. We will present it shortly.

For our clients, nothing stops: the contacts remain the same.

Stay tuned: we will tell you more very soon.

And the next time someone writes the list for you, ask them the question. Could you bid on this tender?