GORDON Brown and his Government – whoever’s still part of it by the time this goes to press – have found themselves on the receiving end of very little in the way of praise of late.

Specifically, our industry has had precious little to welcome by way of Government announcements. However, I am happy to give a welcome nod in their general direction as far as plans to overhaul the Prequalification Questionnaire (PQQ) are concerned.

As a sector, we need all of the help we can get to assist us in our negotiating of the global economic crisis, so news of the proposals, which could save contractors thousands of pounds, is indeed heartening.

Should they be implemented, contractors would be able to belong to only one prequalification scheme under the changes mooted by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR).

BERR is developing a Publicly Available Specification (PAS) in conjunction with the British Standards Institute (BSI), with the aim of putting together a standard form containing the most common PQQ questions. As a result, BERR intends that contractors need only belong to one body which adheres to the standard in order to qualify for the common PQQ questions.

The cost of membership to numerous different schemes under the current system would be slashed, but another key benefit is time.

We all know how much time skilled people in our teams spend working on tenders and that time is increasingly valuable in the current economic climate because we want our best people working on bringing in new work. If we can cut the time spent on PQQs, these people can put more hours into generating leads and following them up.

The new PAS scheme specification will not be compulsory, and it falls one step below the full British Standard, but it is a good start and the industry itself – contractors and clients – can help itself by ensuring it is as widespread as possible.

This means that it is implemented not only for things like frameworks, but also for smaller work to allow SMEs to benefit and to access public sector contracts.

For more information on Constructing Excellence in the North East contact Catriona Lingwood, on 0191-3837435 or catriona@cene.org.uk