Yeah, BUT…

In my last post I suggested that smaller public sector organizations should stop competing against each other for the same limited contractor resources and instead try collaborating on their capital plans.  Unfortunately, to-date I do not have a single concrete example of when someone took the advice that I was trying to give.  However, I am stubborn and will keep trying.  The response is usually what I have come to expect — some nodding, some skepticism, and a lot of “yeah, but…” 

So this week I want to take on the “yeah, buts” head-on. These are the five objections I hear most often when I suggest this approach, in roughly the order I hear them. 

1. “There’s history between us.” 

This one almost always comes up first, and it almost always traces back to specific people, not the organizations themselves. Somebody used to work at the municipality and left for the school district under bad circumstances. A former CFO at the College torched a relationship a decade ago. Two facility directors don’t get along. 

Here’s the thing — most of those people aren’t there anymore, and the ones who are have probably moved on more than the institutional memory suggests. Organizations carry grudges longer than the humans inside them do. If you’re letting a ten-year-old falling-out between two people who have both since retired dictate your capital planning strategy today, that is worth examining. Pick up the phone. You might be surprised how short the memory actually is on the other side. 

If one of the “problem children” is still part of your neighbor’s organization, maybe you just need to wait for them to retire before you try.  So it isn’t “No” it is “Not Yet”. 

2. “Our procurement rules won’t allow it.” 

Sometimes this is true. More often it is a reflex answer from someone who has not actually checked. Public sector procurement frameworks across North America generally do allow joint procurement, cooperative purchasing, and piggyback contracts — most provinces and states have specific provisions for exactly this kind of arrangement. There are rules, yes, and they vary, but “we can’t” is rarely the right answer. “We have not figured out how” is usually closer to the truth. 

If you are genuinely unsure, the right next step is a conversation with your procurement lead, not a polite “no thanks” to your neighbor. 

This is where cooperative procurement agreements can be a huge advantage in that they generally satisfy procurement requirements, so you can take that issue right off the board in the discussion.  Speaking of Boards, just a different type…

3. “Our Board would never approve that.” 

Maybe. But have you asked them? In my experience, the Board or Council objection is more often a projection by staff than an actual Board position. Boards generally like two things: saving money and being seen to be good stewards of public funds. A well-framed proposal that demonstrates better pricing, attracts better contractors, and shows the organization working collaboratively with its neighbors is usually a pretty easy sell. 

You obviously cannot control the final decision your Board makes, but I cannot see any situation where they wouldn’t at least appreciate the idea you are bringing forward, since it is grounded in strong financial stewardship.  The worst they can say is no.   

4. “We’ve never done that before.” 

This is not actually an objection. It is a description of the status quo dressed up as a reason. Every practice your organization has today was, at some point, something you had never done before. 

I’m not trying to be glib here, but the DCRM challenges facing public sector organizations are not getting easier to manage, and the contractor market is not getting more accommodating. If “we’ve never done that before” is enough to stop you from trying something new, your DCRM backlog is going to keep growing. Full stop. 

5. “I don’t know how it would work.” 

Honestly? This is the most legitimate objection on the list, and the one I have the most patience for. The mechanics of collaborative capital planning — who leads, how costs get allocated, what the contract structure looks like, how you handle different fiscal years — are genuinely not obvious. There is no off-the-shelf playbook. 

In my experience many facilities professionals are highly technical people and prefer to have all the answers before proceeding.  In this case “I don’t know how” is a problem you can solve. “We won’t try” is not. Start with one trade, one neighbor, one year. Learn from it. Scale from there. You do not need to figure out the whole thing on day one. 

None of these objections are nonsense. Every one of them reflects something real. But none of them, individually or together, are good enough reasons to keep doing the same thing and getting the same results. 

Next post in this series will tackle what is probably the biggest practical barrier of all — the data challenges of collaborating across organizations that don’t share the same systems, standards, or even definitions of what they own. Because before you can pool a roofing tender with your neighbor, you both have to actually know what roofs you have.