A new policy regulating Trinity’s employment of external service providers has been approved by the College Board. The policy will provide a more coherent approach to how Trinity engages with “labour only” services.
According to the draft version of the new policy and procedure, seen by The University Times, this strategy sets out guidelines for College to consider including deciding “which such contractors should and should not be engaged” and “the processes by which the engagements will be approved, monitored and reported”.
The new policy and procedure, approved by the College Board at its meeting of January 25th 2017, upon the recommendation of the College’s Finance Committee in December 2016, follows a consultation process “with various stakeholders”, according to the minutes of the December 19th meeting of the Finance Committee, having been initially drawn up by the Secretary of the College, John Coman, in response to recommendations from an Internal Audit Report in March 2016.
The draft version of the new policy says that it will cover “third parties contractors” – usually companies or partnerships – paid for their work on a daily, weekly or monthly basis and whose work consists “for the main part in providing ‘labour only’ services such as staff resources”.
However, this new policy will not cover “external contractors who provide services under a separately tendered project”, such as legal services and audit services. This means that some of the larger projects undertaken by Trinity, involving external consultants, such as the ongoing Estates Strategy and the much-criticised logo redesign in 2014, will not fall under the new policy.
According to the policy, such staff will “typically” be employed by third-party contractors who work in College, report to a College staff member and provide a service to College. While they may not often be directly employed by the College, such service providers “may be fulfilling the work of a Trinity post on a temporary basis” and as a result appear on the College’s website, emailing list and other directories.
In an email to The University Times, the Secretary to the College, John Coman, explained a “two phase approval process” contained within the policy, the first of which is the “approval of a robust business case”. This is followed by “the selection of the provider at the second stage” which will, according to Coman, “also avoid any unnecessary deployment of resources”.
The policy outlines the procedure for the pre-approval of this “robust business case”, with several points that must be included by “a senior Trinity staff member and budget holder typically at the level of Head of School, Head of Research Institute or Head of Unit” in its submission to the appropriate Approval Officer, including an explanation as to why alternative avenues “such as internal or external recruitment to a Trinity post of employment” are not being recommended, a detailed risk assessment of contracted services and an explanation of “any specialist skills / capabilities or experience” and the reason they cannot be provided by alternative means.
The policy also contains provisions for ongoing monitoring “of all arrangements in place which are within the scope of this Policy”, post-contract evaluation of the service provision made to the Approval Officer and raising purchase orders to ensure that “internal control in relation to the engagement of individual contractors is strong”.
According to Coman, the previous procedure for engaging external service providers took place “on a case by case basis where the Head of the Area approved the engagement” and that this new “formal procedure” is hoped to “ensure that there is a uniform approach across the university with clear visibility on the total level of such activity”.
The new policy has been approved by Board, subject to “minor corrections”, while the College’s Finance Committee also pledged to have the College Secretary review the policy after one year in operation “to ensure any issues arising post‐implementation would be addressed”.
