Rhian Begg

Contract Monitoring – Getting The Best Out Of Your Services: Formal Review Meetings

Review meetings are a critically important part of keeping your contract on track. As previously discussed for catering and cleaning services , hopefully you’ve been keeping in contact with your area manager or operations manager through informal meetings. Frequency Formal meetings should be planned in advance. The frequency may be broadly dictated by whatever was […]

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Contract Monitoring – Getting The Best Out Of Your Services: Foundations Of Good Contract Monitoring

You’ve run your tender process, awarded the contract, the new provider has started in your school or Trust, but how can you be sure that what you wanted (and what they promised!) is what you’re getting?  Two of the most complex services in a school or Trust are catering and cleaning.  In this blog we

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Getting The Best Out Of Your Services: Catering Contract Monitoring

Once you have a clear idea of what you should be expecting from your contractor, then you can get down to the detail of the service. The two key areas to consider as part of your monitoring: review meetings and financial performance. Review meetings (formal and informal) As with cleaning services, these are the meetings

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Getting The Best Out Of Your Services – Cleaning Contract Monitoring

Once you have a clear idea of what you should be expecting from your contractor, then you can get down to the detail of the service.  There are three main elements to your cleaning monitoring, and keeping on top of these will help ensure that the service runs smoothly.  Review meetings (formal and informal)  As

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GUEST BLOG: Preventing and responding to a cyber attack

Neil Limbrick is an independent consultant who has worked in an IT Strategy Role with MATs and Schools for over 20 years. He is currently working with over 100 different networks through theEducationCollective made of up of 10,000 individuals in over 5,000 schools. Neil also joined us for an excellent webinar on this subject. In

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Navigating the Stages of a Restricted Procedure PCR2015 Tender Process

Navigating the complexities of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (PCR2015) can be daunting for schools and other public sector organisations. Understanding the various stages of the tender process under these regulations is crucial to ensure compliance and achieve the best outcomes for your school or Trust. The most common procedure used by schools is the

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ISO:9001 certification – a benchmarking case study 

We are very proud to be ISO:9001 accredited (read more about why it matters here) and recently completed our annual surveillance audit, which were very pleased to pass without any issues. Particularly pleased, as we recently moved to a new auditing company.  Why did we change companies? Not because we were dissatisfied with our previous

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Procuring Construction and Estate Management Professional Services – A Supplier’s Perspective 

With a decade of working with schools and academies on construction and estate management, both as a client and as a consultant, Jonathan Jones of MAC Construction Consultants is well placed to understand the complexities of procuring professional support services. In this blog he brings his expertise to bear to highlight what you need to do to

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Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): what are they, why are they important and where do they come from? 

KPIs are measurable values that demonstrate how well a service is performing. They may be high level, focussing on overall performance, or low-level, focussing on detailed requirements. As part of your school or Trust’s contracts with your service suppliers you should ensure that you have terms or clauses in your legal agreement referring to Key

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General Advice On Writing A ‘Fit For Purpose’ Specification

With procurement support and training for schools, academies and Trusts diminishing, I have decided to try and plug the gap in this blog and related webinar by looking at how you can write a fit for purpose specification to help you run your tender processes more efficiently and effectively. 

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Aligning Your Estates Vision With Your Educational Vision

Jo Marchant, author of the brilliantly practical “The School Premises Handbook”, has worked in school estate management for the last 15 years.  In this blog, Jo shares with us her thoughts on how to align your estates vision with your educational vision. Your eductional vision should influence everything you do, from how you run your

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Minerva Procurement Consultancy Services Annual Customer Service Survey Results

Celebrating Service Excellence At Minerva Procurement Consultancy Services, we are thrilled to announce the results of our Annual Customer Service Survey, conducted in conjunction with National Customer Service Week. This year’s survey yielded fantastic feedback from our valued clients, and we couldn’t be more delighted to share the results with you including a very special

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How To Make Your School Stand Out From The Crowd

Communitas PR is a marketing communications consultancy working exclusively in the education sector both in the UK and internationally. Director Ken Stevens has designed and led on a number of whole-school launches and website developments for Mayesbrook Park School, as well as South Bank Engineering UTC , Barking and Dagenham School Improvement Service (BDSIP) and The Lion Academy Trust. In

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Your IT Audit: What You Must Do, What You Should Do and What You Could Do

IT is a massive area and understanding what you need to audit and how you should go about it is equally massive. In this blog, Neil Limbrick uses his considerable expertise to help you focus your attention on the areas you should be concentrating on and signposts some of the resources that can really help you.

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Minerva and B1G1 – Working With Our Clients To Make A Positive Contribution To Society

Our aim at Minerva is to ensure that we provide an excellent service and make a big difference to our clients.
However, we also feel that we should be making a bigger difference to the wider world.

Read how we are working on our client’s behalf with B1G1 to make this a reality.

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Social Media Checks – How To Get Them Right

Ben Hart is the Co-Founder and Director of Social Media Check (www.socialmediacheck.com) with over 15 years working as an accredited detective and senior investigating officer in roles that included major investigations utilising online searching and data interrogation. Given that online activity has become a key part of our behaviour, social media checks have become an integral

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