If BETT is anything to go by, the number of BSF suppliers and consultants seems to be growing faster than the fear of bird flu. Virtually every stand we visited was either hoping to join or supply the various consortia bidding for BSF work or they were involved with consultants ‘who have BSF (and Academies) expertise’. The later is a bold claim given the limited number of pathfinder local authorities involved at this stage and the small number of projects actually in development.
To an outsider, BSF looks more and more like an elaborate procurement exercise (as Sharon Wright predicted in our Executive Soapbox last month) one where shareholders in companies who have set up BSF teams must be getting very edgy about the amount of money that is going into chasing this work for such little return. It’s more than likely that in the short term the most lucrative aspect of BSF will be for headhunters recruiting BSF teams. If the number of projects does not expand radically, headhunters may remain the most profitable area with the next growth being in BSF outplacement services.
