Procurement as a Strategic Lever: Why Early-Stage Decisions Are Now the Risk

5 July 2026 · 4 min read · Procurement & Commercial

The latest research from SCAPE, surfaced in this month's RICS Construction Journal, draws on responses from 70 senior local authority directors across 63 English councils. The conclusion is unambiguous: the project is no longer most at risk during construction. It is most at risk before construction begins — during scoping, business case development and procurement. For developers, funders and contractors commissioning schemes today, that finding has direct implications for how every live pipeline should be managed.

What the Data Actually Shows

More than four in five councils now identify the earliest project phases — feasibility, business case approval and procurement — as the moment when progress is most likely to stall. Two thirds have seen programme slippage as a direct result, and almost four in five report cost inflation or budget overrun. The drivers are predictable: input-cost volatility, a contracting pool that is thinner than it was, and a planning and policy environment that is moving faster than scheme assumptions.

Critically, the report identifies an early-stage commercial capability gap. Forty per cent of councils cite a lack of in-house expertise as a barrier to progressing schemes through these phases. This is not a public-sector problem in isolation. The same commercial skills shortage — particularly around cost planning, risk pricing and procurement strategy — is now the limiting factor on private developer pipelines too.

Why This Matters for Private-Sector Schemes

Public-sector findings translate surprisingly well into the developer and contractor environment. In our work on residential, mixed-use and commercial schemes over the past 12 months, the same pattern is visible:

• Feasibility cost plans are being revisited twice before planning consent. Input cost movement and policy shifts (planning reform, Building Safety Levy, embodied carbon) are invalidating baseline assumptions within months rather than years.
• Pre-construction periods are extending. The window between contractor appointment and start on site is now routinely 6–9 months on schemes over £10m, with cost plan refreshes happening midway. This is a procurement consequence, not a design one.
• Risk pricing is the new battleground. Tender returns increasingly diverge not on price but on the assumptions each contractor has made about ground conditions, programme, supply chain and statutory undertaker risk. The lowest bid is rarely the lowest risk-adjusted bid.
• Frameworks are being used selectively, not universally. Where they work well — repeat-build housing, public-sector regeneration, infrastructure — frameworks deliver continuity. Where they constrain the market or lock in legacy pricing, they can become a liability.

Once seen as an administrative gateway, procurement is now the strategic lever that determines whether a scheme reaches site at all. The cost manager's job has shifted from producing the tender report to designing the procurement route.

Practical Steps for Cost Managers and Developers

1. Treat the procurement strategy as a deliverable, not a step. Document the chosen route — single-stage, two-stage, design-and-build, framework call-off — with an explicit risk allocation and a refresh trigger. If input costs move more than 5% between business case and tender, the strategy should be reviewed, not just the prices.
2. Bring the contractor in at feasibility on complex schemes. Two-stage procurement is no longer a luxury. Where ground conditions, M&E intensity or programme risk are material, early contractor involvement reduces design rework and surfaces buildability risk before it lands in the cost plan.
3. Re-baseline cost plans at planning consent. The old model of one cost plan at Stage 3 and another at Stage 5 is broken. We now routinely produce three: feasibility, pre-planning, and post-planning (post Section 106 / Building Safety Levy confirmation). Each one feeds a different go/no-go decision.
4. Price risk explicitly in tender returns. Ask tendering contractors to separate price, programme, risk allowance and qualifications. Comparing gross figures across contractors with different risk assumptions is meaningless and routinely leads to the wrong appointment.
5. Use frameworks where the project type repeats. For housing, education and infrastructure, a well-managed framework cuts procurement time by months and stabilises pricing. For one-off commercial or high-spec residential work, frameworks can be over-engineered — direct procurement remains the better fit.

What This Means for Our Clients

The headline from the SCAPE / RICS research is not really about local authorities. It is about the early-stage commercial decisions that determine whether any scheme — public or private — gets built. For our developer clients, the question is no longer "have we appointed a QS" but "have we appointed a QS early enough to shape the procurement strategy, not just report on it." For funders, the early-stage cost plan and the procurement route are now the most reliable indicators of scheme viability — more so than the developer's own residual valuation.

We are embedding this into our live engagements: earlier involvement at feasibility, an explicit procurement-strategy deliverable alongside the cost plan, and a cost-plan refresh tied to planning milestones rather than to RIBA stages. If you would like to discuss how exposed your current pipeline is to early-stage commercial risk, we are happy to talk it through.

Sources: Compton-James, C., Rethinking delivery in an unsettled market: procurement as a strategic lever, RICS Construction Journal, 1 July 2026; SCAPE / Local Government Information Unit, Delivering Through Change (2026) — survey of 70 senior officers across 63 English councils; RICS Scotland Conference 2026 proceedings, University of Strathclyde TIC, July 2026; BCIS Tender Price Index, Q2 2026. This article is for general guidance only and does not constitute legal or professional advice.