Decision details

Request to waive CSO 8.03 to obtain at least 3 competitive quotations and approval for award of contract for the provision of Programme Management services by Altair Advisory and Consultancy Services Ltd

Decision Maker: Assistant Director for Housing

Decision status: Recommendations Approved

Is Key decision?: No

Is subject to call in?: No

Decision:

The Council’s current Housing Delivery Programme Manager commences a secondment to the GLA from September 21 – May 22 leaving an urgent void to this key role to support the delivery and manage the governance of the Council’s number one priority programme. This report therefore seeks approval to appoint Altair Advisory and Consultancy Services Limited (‘Altair’) to provide Programme Management services for the Housing Delivery Programme up to five days a week for a duration of 9 months to aid delivery of the Council’s ambition to build 1,000 council homes by 2022.
The total value of the contract will be up to £117,000. The contract will start September 2021 and finish on May 2022.

Reasons for the decision:

This appointment is required as the current Programme Manager is being seconded to the GLA from September 2021 – May 2022. This leaves an urgent void in the Housing Delivery Programme of a 9-month long role that needs to be filled as soon as possible to enable a smooth handover from the current resource to the new resource.

Alternative options considered:

An alternative option to appoint permanently to the role cannot be considered as this appointment can only be cover for the 9 months secondment role until the current programme manager returns from secondment.

A further option would be to appoint an alternative interim, however no other consultancy firm that is currently working with the team or not has an interim candidate that has both the relevant industry experience and the specific experience of working in the housing delivery team and on this programme at Haringey.
A final option would be to appoint someone else working in the housing delivery team. However, no-one in the team has the relevant programme management and governance experience and senior experience essential to deliver this role. As part of housing delivery’s re-structure, the intention is to grow the programme management function and the intention will be to have new permanent roles in the team at different levels that internal employees could chose to apply for.


Publication date: 18/08/2021

Date of decision: 05/08/2021