Case Study for PPN 03/21 Supply Chain Resilience - Term Services Short Contract

The Education Authority (EA) undertook a major multi-year re-procurement of its Term Services Short Contracts (TSSC). The TSSC provide critical building, mechanical and electrical maintenance services across all Controlled, Non-Controlled properties, ensuring safe, compliant school environments.
In line with PPN 03/21 – Supply Chain Resilience (supply chain risk, monitoring and contingency planning), EA built a strong resilience focus into the procurement design via a lotting Strategy, evaluation process, and future contract management that ensured we are equipped to deal with market volatility, reduce supplier dependency, and maintain operational continuity.

The primary objectives of EA’s supply chain resilience approach were:

• Maintain uninterrupted statutory and reactive maintenance services across the school estate.
• Reduce supply chain risk by diversifying suppliers across various Lots.
• Strengthen visibility and traceability within supply chains, ensuring compliance with human rights and modern slavery obligations.
• Introduce robust contingency measures to ensure alternative routes to service delivery in the event of supplier failure via non-exclusivity clauses.
• Align fully with PPN 03/21 requirements, integrating risk assessment, mitigation, monitoring and active supplier management throughout the contract lifecycle.

1. Multi-Lot, Multi-Supplier Model to Reduce Dependency Risk
   EA redesigned the procurement into 18 lots across six independent procurements, within each procurement, a supplier was restricted to winning only one lot. This prevented supplier dominance, stimulated competition and segmented risk.
    
2. Risk Identification
   Contracts require suppliers to:
   Identify resilience risks such as labour shortages or material lead times.
   Provide mitigation plans and update them periodically.
   This aligns directly with the risk transparency requirements under PPN 03/21.
    
3. Inflation Management Through Monthly BCIS Indexation
   Suppliers raised concerns about volatile pricing during the pre-market engagement (PME). EA addressed this by embedding monthly Building Cost Information Service (BCIS) inflation indexation from contract start, ensuring contracts remained financially viable throughout their term. This stabilises supply chain performance and reduces failure risk.
    
4. Ethical Supply Chain Assurance (PPN 05/21 Alignment)
   To address human rights, labour exploitation and modern slavery risks (in line with PPN 05/21 – Managing Risks of Modern Slavery)

• Annual Human Rights declarations are required
• Fair Work and Living Wage commitments are embedded.
• Contractors must cascade policies throughout their supply chain.
• These measures strengthen ethical resilience

Although contracts have recently commenced, EA has already strengthened resilience across the full supply chain landscape:

• A diversified supplier base across 18 lots reduces single-supplier risk significantly.
• Transparent supply chains enable proactive risk mitigation.
• Commercial stability has been achieved through BCIS indexation, reducing the risk of supplier withdrawal.
• Human rights compliance is strengthened through mandatory declarations and policy commitments.

Over time, this will deliver greater stability, and a more resilient future supply base.

EA’s TSSC procurement programme demonstrates a comprehensive, best-practice application of PPN 03/21 in a complex, high-risk operational environment. The combination of diversified lotting, transparent supply chain mapping, inflation stabilisation, ethical compliance has created a robust commercial framework to mitigate against supply chain volatility and operational shocks.