Mike Raven is the National Association of Construction Frameworks National Sustainability Lead, as well as Performance and Improvement Manager for YORhub. Mike is a chartered construction manager with over two decades of experience in construction project management and construction procurement.

When you buy a piece of flatpack furniture, are you the type of person that reads the instructions first and checks that you've got all of the screws and bolts before beginning? Or do you dive in, screwing things together, keen to get your new coffee table assembled and in position so you can take a photo of it for Instagram (complete with a chocolate-dusted latte in a stylish mug)?

If you're the second type - and especially if you find yourself having to dissassemble your coffee table because you put the top on upside-down and it doesn't look right - coming up with the procurement strategy for a programme of retrofit works may not come naturally.

Time and again as a client-side construction project manager I've seen projects that have suffered under the weight of a poor procurement decision made by individuals with a lack of awareness of procurement best practice, pushing incomplete designs out to tender, making a fully designed scheme "design & build" so the contractor has to take the risk, or deciding on the use of an open tender exercise as a kneejerk reaction. This results in poor tender returns, increased prices, and sometimes the wrong contractor being awarded the project.

When it comes to retrofit projects, there are additional risks inherent when comparing to new builds. You can do every survey under the sun but you will still encounter some surprise when on site. At some point someone in the team will exclaim "I can't believe they did this" when uncovering something shoddy. And your list of compensation events is bound to be longer than on a new build project.

Getting the procurement strategy right isn't exciting, and anyone (except for a procurement geek like me) is lying if they say it is. But by being honest about the risks (ie how good is your on site information and your surveys really??), taking into account the age of the building and what might be likely encountered, making sure that you engage early with the supply chain - because they're the ones who actually deal with these buildings day-in day-out - and being willing to properly allocate risks and actively manage the project, you can make a success of retrofit.

To do this not only requires the right contractor, but also the right designers and delivery team, and with the advent of the Building Safety Act, and the identification of the Client as a "Responsible Person", you need the right people around you. This may be the people you use time and again, who you have a good working relationship with and who understands your needs, or it may be a specialist in the type of project you're looking to deliver.

For the public sector, frameworks are an important tool in the procurement process. Frameworks can give you rapid access to suppliers and raise the profile of your procurement, and create real economies in terms of time and money. However, there is a proliferation of frameworks out there, and it's not always easy to decide which is best.

Detailed in the Construction Playbook, National Association of Construction Frameworks (https://nacf.org.uk/) providers, like those that spoke at CN RE:NEW Retrofit in Focus (myself of YORhub and James Wright of Southern Construction Frameworks) lead the adoption of procurement best practice in local government and across the public sector, working with the Local Government Association to help shape the future of the national procurement strategy. As the NACF's National Sustainability Lead I work with our frameworks up and down the country on net zero carbon commitments and gathering embodied carbon data with the aim of generating a dataset usable to identify better ways to build.

To find out more go to https://nacf.org.uk/ or email me at Michael.raven@eastriding.gov.uk