Cabinet Office
You can read the definition of pipelines and the qualifying criteria in the spend controls policy summary.
Purpose of pipelines
Your organisation must create and maintain pipelines showing future activity to follow the current versions of the commercial and digital and technology spend controls processes. Pipelines help your organisation to:
- see all commercial, digital and technology spend activity
- plan resourcing and capability requirements
- improve spend planning and transparency for your management team
- focus expertise on spend activities that require more oversight, allowing you to spot patterns or duplicated spend within your organisation
- reduce retrospective spend requests
- plan for extensions, renewals, and new requirements earlier
- promote assurance activity that is sensible and proportionate
Overlap between pipelines
You can overlap commercial pipelines with digital and technology pipelines. For example, when digital and technology activity totals 10 million or over, you must feature this activity on both pipelines during the triaging process. You should work jointly with the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) and the Cabinet Office Central Commercial Teams to ask for approval.
You must include any ongoing activity that could incur future spend in both pipelines, even if you have not secured funding. This includes Independent Shared Service Centres activity, for example, current or new back office/administrative systems a website or service such as hosting, data centres, voice and video, security expenditure related to PSN.
Pipeline templates
Your organisation must record activities on your pipelines, and you should add new spend to your pipeline as soon as possible.
You must make sure planned spend is included in your pipeline and within scope of the respective controls. You do not need to include existing contracts that you are not replacing in the pipeline.
The Cabinet Office has developed 2 templates of what you should include in commercial and digital and technology pipelines, at a minimum.
Commercial pipeline template
| Field | What to include (if applicable) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reference number | Enter the unique organisation reference number, if applicable. | |
| Business area | Enter the business area/organisation owner for this contract. | |
| Short description | A short contextual entry about the activity. This should reference how the activity delivers your organisations strategy and what is being purchased. Please reference the overarching programme when relevant. | |
| Contract title | The planned or published activity name | |
| Commercial strategy | The commercial strategy or approach for the commercial activity. Potential options include: 1. New requirement 2. Re-procurement (same scope) 3. Re-procurement (different scope) 4. Extension | |
| Existing contract end date | Enter the end date of the existing contract, for example, the first date that the contract needs replacing. If this is a new requirement, please enter N/A if not applicable. | |
| Next Business Case Stage | You should include your business case, either in its strategic outline, rough draft, or full outline. | |
| Planned date for next business case stage | Enter a valid date for your next business case. | |
| Procurement start date | Enter your procurement procedure start date. For example, the release of OJEU or commencement of a further competition under a framework agreement. | |
| Contract start date | Enter a valid start date for your new contract. | |
| New contract end date (excluding options) | Enter a valid end date of the new contract. This excludes options, for example, options for extension. | |
| Value of new contract (excluding options) | Enter the value of the new contract. This excludes any value associated with options for extension. | |
| Procurement sourcing route | The procurement vehicle being used to source the contract. Options include Framework, OJEU, below OJEU and Dynamic Purchasing Systems. | |
| Level of competition | How did you award your supplier contract? For example, was there a competitive tender, a mini-competition, a single source or a direct award? | |
| Spend category | You should classify the type of work youre doing with the spend. This can be from any system your organisation uses as a standard practice, including CAS, CPV, UNSPSC. | |
| Contract tiering | You should include the contract tier classification as per your organisation preference and outline the level of risk, for example, Tier 1,2,3 / Gold, Silver, Bronze. | |
| Existing Supplier | Enter the name of your current supplier of the service, if applicable. | |
| Which functional standards apply | Enter the type of Cabinet Office spend controls that apply. For example, digital and technology, commercial or property. | |
| Assessment against functional standards (triage) | Your spend will have been assessed by your organisation. It will either be assured, monitor, control, or pending. | |
| Senior Responsible Owner | Enter the Senior Responsible Owner for each contract or spend activity. | |
| Main Contact | Enter the name and contact details of the single point of contact. |
Digital and technology pipeline template
Download a template of the digital and technology pipeline
| Field | What to include (Compulsory fields are marked) |
|---|---|
| Programme identifier | To improve data quality departments should give every line a unique reference number. Programme identifiers are optional. |
| Project identifier (compulsory) | You must have a project identifier. To improve data quality departments should give every line a unique reference number. |
| Department (compulsory) | Enter a shortened name of the department. This should be well-known like DEFRA or MOD. |
| Area (compulsory) | This should be the arms length
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