Swansea City and County Council’s Design Roster - It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Free Your Work Is.

James Good Limited was recently invited to apply for a position on the Swansea City and County Council’s design roster. If successful we would have been one of five design agencies permitted to supply design services to our local council.

With our recent efforts to raise our local awareness, this was an opportunity that we were keen to grasp. As always, we spent a long time preparing our presentation and completing the application process.

Our application was immediately assessed and scored with the Council’s own points based system. After receiving a call to inform us that we’d been unsuccessful in our application, they gave me the opportunity to ask any questions. Surprisingly, they were very forthcoming in their feedback and the following information was relayed.

I was firstly informed that our application was extremely close to securing a place and was only a few points short, as if that made it slightly better!

Portfolio & Local Authority Experience
The Council were very impressed with our design work and there was absolutely no doubt in our ability to provide the level of creative work that they would demand. They felt that our portfolio was a little light with regards to local authority experience and suggested we seek work from other local councils including Neath, Camarthen or even other departments within Swansea Council. Entirely due to the level of local authority experience they scored us 8 of 10 for the strength of our design portfolio.

Company Size
One of the assessors told me that they weren’t considering agencies of any less than 10 employees. The other assessor was happy (albeit somewhat reluctant!) to list the successful agencies including their employee numbers; the majority of which are less than 10, one being only 3! I therefore assume that this is really a non issue... especially with regards to our imminent growth, which I obviously informed them about in the application. They were apparently concerned with our ability to cope with the volume of work if they were to give us two jobs at once! This is obviously the reason for the requirement of a roster comprising five design agencies!

Price
Part of the application process was to give an indication of design times and relative costs to some basic design pieces. The question read:

Knowing that they wouldn’t be in a position to provide any additional information we provided an estimated range for each.
The feedback received was that out of the 15 agencies we were the only design agency that provided a range of estimates. Our lower end figures were competitive and in line with what they’d expected, however our high end figures seemed a little expensive. We were therefore scored down. They agreed that if we’d omitted the high figures we would not have been scored down on this point.

And the biggie... FREE PITCHING
The question on the form read: Are you willing to provide free visuals for large pitch requests.
Our answer: Unfortunately, we are prohibited to enter into free-pitching due to the code of conduct set out by the Chartered Society of Designers. We can go through the process of project exploration, research and proposing our solution in writing in an effort to demonstrate a clear understanding of the project, but are not able to present finished designs on spec without a fee for our creative work.

The assessors confirmed that this was in fact the main reason for our rejection and that Swansea City and County Council expect design agencies to provide free visuals for projects of around £10,000.

We were not only scored down on this point, we were scored 0 out of 10.

In Conclusion
This particular exercise of free pitching entirely wastes the time of the design agencies that have already been pre-qualified and have already demonstrated their ability to provide the services required, hence their acceptance onto the roster.

Ultimately someone will have to pay for the wasted time, whether it be the design agencies themselves, the council (and therefore the tax payer) by way of the design agencies overbilling on future projects to recoup their losses or small businesses that receive services at inflated prices to cover the additional expense incurred by this frivolous practice.

As a member of the Chartered Society of Designers, I have been assessed by my peers and my ability and credibility is now endorsed by the design sector’s professional body. I am bound by a code of conduct that has been drafted by design professionals, for the benefit of the profession, that does not permit me to enter into free pitching. If I were to operate outside of the code of conduct my membership would be revoked. This therefore means that no credible designer that is a member of the design sector's professional body can currently work with Swansea City and County Council on their ‘large pitches’.

Free pitching is a huge drain on the resources of the design community and, in my humble opinion, this is an irresponsible use of the Council’s power and a practice that should cease immediately. There is no other profession where it is acceptable or common practice to request custom work for free.

This is bad for Swansea City and County Council, this is bad for Swansea’s design community and this is bad for the local economy. If Swansea is to be at the forefront of creativity and one-day to be renowned as a city of creative excellence, surely we should lead by example, demonstrate best practice and not exploit our local designers?

As one of Swansea's leading design professionals, I personally would like to see my Council respond by reassessing their policies and making a public stand against this practice by removing the requirement of free pitching from their design roster criteria.

James Good
Member of the Chartered Society of Designers
Creative Director of James Good Limited