Procurement
Laura is experienced in advising on public procurement law, and advises contracting authorities (including NHS Foundation Trusts, CCGs, NHS Trusts, housing associations, local authorities and transportation clients) and suppliers (both public and private sector) on process and potential challenges to procurements.
For an NHS Foundation Trust, she ran the re-procurement (via the restricted procedure) of catering services at a PFI mental health hospital, drafting the contract, advising on a variety of tricky and interesting public procurement law compliance points and preparing the tender evaluation report to the Trust board. Prior to this, she was also heavily involved in the re-procurement of a further two facilities management contracts, again via the restricted procedure.
Laura drafted a variety of procurement-related template and guidance documentation for use by Special Health Authority’s procurement team.
She undertook an 18 month secondment role for a Special Health Authority, primarily assisting the client with the procurement of three multi-million pounds IT outsourcing contracts. Two of the contracts were procured via call offs following further competitions under a CCS framework agreement. The other procurement, was conducted using the competitive procedure with negotiation. The CCS Model Services Agreement was used as the base document, and tailored appropriately, for the resultant contract.
Laura assisted a local authority in relation to complex procurements, involving multiple lots, using the competitive dialogue procedure.
PFI / NHS LIFT
She has played a key role on major PFI schemes including the ground breaking Advance PFI scheme and a joint procurement of two separate PFI schemes for a PCT/CCG and a mental health NHS Foundation Trust.
Laura has advised numerous PCTs and local authorities on commercial aspects of NHS LIFT and was an integral part of the team advising a local authority in relation to its Building Schools for the Future scheme.
She advised an NHS Foundation Trust on its new diagnostic and treatment centre using a third party developer and private funder. The facilities management services at the new centre were ultimately provided by the Trust’s trading company. She assisted the developer in running an OJEU compliant procurement process.
She has advised Fire and Rescue Authorities in relation to their operational PFI schemes.
Laura has recently worked on the negotiated termination of an NHS Foundation Trust’s PFI scheme.
She has assisted an NHS Foundation Trust in connection with an adjudication procedure in respect of the Trust’s right to undertake a maintenance survey of a PFI hospital.
She has excellent project planning and management skills, and is known for taking a well thought through and organised approach.
Contracts
Laura is familiar with many standard contracts and frequently reviews, drafts and negotiates bespoke contractual documents dealing with, for example:
- Outsourcing
- Provision of goods / services
- Strategic alliance arrangements
including non-binding service level agreements and memoranda of understanding.
Laura has supported contract negotiations with prominent cloud providers concerning machine learning proof of concepts, and helped negotiate an overarching purchase of services agreement with an executive non-departmental public body.
Laura has been seconded to an NHS Foundation Trust following its successful bid to provide mental health and learning disability services under CCG commissioning contract, and provided advice in relation to due diligence and commercial contractual issues linked to the “second generation” transfer of services from the incumbent provider.
She has also drafted template contracts in respect of GP scanning and HR shared services.
Constitutional Arrangements
Laura has regularly provided advice to NHS Foundation Trusts on issues concerning their constitutional arrangements, both on the interpretation and effect of the constitution and other governing documents, and on revisions to reflect changing priorities/circumstances and policy/legislation.