The Problem

Brooke’s government client delivers critical sovereign capability, in concert with a strategic industry partner, that helps to protect Australian and allied Naval personnel from harm. The existing commercial arrangements were no longer fit for purpose, as they were established when the capability was much less mature.

This was evidenced by:

• Multiple contracts were being used to manage individual transactions, which made procurement cumbersome and detracted from collaboration between partners;
• Key staff were bogged down with inefficient transactional and administrative tasks, unable to focus on strategic planning and decision making;
• No joint planning or anticipation of future requirements; and
• Poor customer satisfaction.

Our client needed to reinvigorate the strategic partnership through a simplified commercial structure that was better aligned with capability delivery outcomes and placed a strong emphasis on collaboration.

Thinking Differently

Brooke’s collaborative contract design process brought our client and their strategic partner together to jointly define what success looked like for their future partnership. We facilitated the parties to agree a future commercial framework to meet the requirements of the capability today, with enough flexibility to cater for future demand.

The outcome was a consolidated contract and streamlined commercial structure that would set the parties up to work collaboratively together to deliver the capability. Brooke’s collaborative approach allowed the parties to agree key principles to guide their work in the future. This was critical to designing the future contract and anticipating how it would work in practice and be governed. A principles-based approach with agreed accountabilities reduced the duplication of work and created justified confidence in the program’s ability to achieve its outcomes and reduce risk.

This resulted in a consolidated commercial contract that reduces contract management and administrative activities by over 50%.

Doing Differently

The newly consolidated contract achieves capability delivery outcomes through collaboration. A commercial partnership with collaboration at its core provides certainty for industry partners and the broader supply chain, driving down the total cost of ownership over time. It also maximises efficiency through pre-agreed terms and reduced transactional work, improving commercial flexibility for both the government and strategic partner, and enabling better customer responsiveness. Lowered administration effort means resources can be redirected to other strategic priorities.

The new governance regime agrees future ordering quantities and capability development at regular intervals, giving greater certainty to the industry partner, their supply chain and enabling
increased delivery speed. Joint decision-making ensures a ‘best for capability approach by engaging the supplier earlier in strategic planning, resulting in more efficient decision making to deliver better capability outcomes for the Commonwealth of Australia and its allies.

Meaningful Results