Firebuy shows early promise

Firebuy Ltd enables savings to be made by negotiating better deals for buying in bulk and will eliminate the duplication of procurement of fire-specific equipment by individual fire and rescue authorities (FRAs). Rather than all 47 FRAs negotiating separately for service-specific items such as vehicles, protective clothing and respiratory equipment, Firebuy Ltd will negotiate contracts on their behalf and take the lead in subsequent contract monitoring and service-level monitoring.

It will be a contracting authority for the purposes of the EU procurement rules, but ultimately it will remain the FRAs who acquire the assets.

Firebuy Ltd can already demonstrate some successes:

• Hand-held portable radios – by using the new framework agreement negotiated by Firebuy, Hereford and Worcester FRA has been able to increase the number of radios provided and still demonstrate a budgetary saving. Their budget allocation was originally for a total of approximately 250 radios (supply only) but they have increased this to 362 (meeting the operational needs of the brigade completely) while saving £12,000 on the budget allocation.

• Smoke alarms – A new smoke alarms framework agreement will generate up to £400,000 in savings. The level of savings depends on how many FRAs buy, but the procurement exercise produced savings of 43p per smoke alarm. FRAs have a target to fit 1.25 million smoke alarms between spring 2006 and spring 2008.

• The Integrated Clothing Project is proceeding well. The Health and Safety Laboratories that have been contracted to assist in the trials are actively looking at incorporating the methodologies employed in the new British Standard on physiological testing for firefighters’ Personal Protective Equipment ensembles. The board’s first meeting was on 5 April and the members are keen to go out and meet regional management boards, FRAs and chief fire officers as soon as possible to hear their views on procurement issues.

Visit the dedicated Firebuy Ltd website (http://www.firebuy.gov.uk/) for more information about current projects and how to contact them.