LHC Framework: how an SME gets appointed

LHC Procurement Group is a not-for-profit procurement organisation, first established by London boroughs in 1966, that provides free-to-use framework agreements and dynamic purchasing systems for the construction, refurbishment and maintenance of homes and public buildings. Its users are public-sector bodies - local authorities, social landlords and housing associations, and other public organisations - who use its frameworks to buy compliantly without procuring from scratch.

It operates across England, Scotland and Wales through a set of regional bodies (its coverage is Great Britain-wide). Being not-for-profit, any surplus is redistributed back to eligible partners rather than taken as profit. In practice, LHC is best known in the social-housing and public-buildings world: kitchens, roofing, windows and doors, whole-building refurbishment, retrofit and maintenance are the kinds of work its frameworks are built around.

A point worth understanding up front: LHC sets up the frameworks and the routes to market, but the individual jobs are commissioned by the buyers who use them. Getting appointed to an LHC framework does not hand you contracts - it makes you one of the approved contractors a council or housing provider can call off from. The work still has to be won.

LHC runs a rolling portfolio of frameworks, each covering a defined type of work and refreshed on a cycle - when one framework reaches the end of its term, a new generation is procured to replace it. That is why suppliers ask about "current" LHC frameworks: the specific framework names and reference codes change over time as each is re-procured, so the live list is what matters, not last cycle's.

The subject areas, though, are stable and centre on the fabric and upkeep of social housing and public buildings. Typical LHC framework territory includes:

• ·Whole-building new-build, construction and major refurbishment for public buildings and homes
• ·Roofing systems and associated works
• ·Kitchens, windows and doors, and other component-replacement programmes
• ·Energy-efficiency and retrofit works on existing housing stock
• ·Repairs, maintenance and associated professional services

You get onto an LHC framework the same way you get onto any framework: by bidding into the competition that sets it up, when it is open. LHC procures each framework as a formal exercise, appoints a pool of contractors to it, and then that pool is fixed for the framework's term. Miss the competition and you generally wait for the next generation - which is exactly the closed-door timing trap that catches SMEs on frameworks generally (our framework vs dynamic market guide explains why that door shuts, and how the newer open frameworks and dynamic markets change it).

The practical implications for a smaller contractor are straightforward. Watch for the framework covering your trade and region coming up for renewal, so you are ready to bid rather than finding out after appointment. Many frameworks are split into lots by work type, value band and region, so a specialist or regional firm can bid for the lots that fit rather than needing national, all-trades scale. And treat the appointment exercise as a real, scored bid - LHC frameworks carry quality and, increasingly, Gold Standard and social-value expectations, not just price.

Where a route is run as a dynamic purchasing system rather than a fixed framework, the timing is kinder: those stay open to join, so you can apply when you are ready rather than waiting for a single competition. Check whether the route you want is a closed framework or an open system before you plan your run at it.

Appointment is access, not revenue. Once you are on the framework, buyers award the actual work through call-offs - either by directly selecting an appointed contractor against the framework's rules, or by running a mini-competition among the appointed suppliers for that specific job. The mini-competition is a scored bid like any other: the buyer sets the criteria, and you win on quality, price and social value within the framework's terms.

So the winning habits are the ordinary ones, aimed at the buyers who use the framework. Make yourself visible and easy to appoint in the framework's own systems; respond fast and completely to mini-competitions; and treat every early call-off as an audition, because framework buyers reuse contractors who deliver. A place on an LHC framework is worth most to the firm that then competes hard for the call-offs, not the one that assumes the slot is the prize.

LHC is one of several public-sector framework providers a construction SME will meet - alongside the Crown Commercial Service and other bodies that run construction and refurbishment frameworks. No single provider is the whole market, and being on one framework does not put you on another. The sensible stance is to identify which frameworks the buyers you actually want to sell to genuinely use, and target those, rather than collecting framework memberships for their own sake.

It also helps to hold frameworks in the same view as the other routes to public construction work: one-off tenders on the national portals, below-threshold council jobs and Quick Quotes on the regional portals, and dynamic markets you can join at any time. Frameworks like LHC's are one lane of that road, strongest for repeatable, programme-style social-housing and public-building works. Our guide to public-sector framework agreements sets out how frameworks, dynamic markets and one-off tenders compare, so you can decide where your effort should fall.