Worksheet1 The HACT clustering model


The HACT clustering model | 1.3

The three strands

The model which was used for the pilot programme had three main strands:

There is no doubt that the availability of facilitation and a budget helped the pilot clusters to achieve the outcomes they did, but they are not indispensable. So far as facilitation is concerned, the main aim of this microsite is to provide potential clusters with the tools to carry out for themselves much of the work which hact consultants carried out in the pilot projects.

The benefits of pooling information

Although a budget is undeniably useful, the experience of the pilot projects was that some of the most useful gains came about as the result of simply pooling information and existing resources. The Bolton Collaborate group identified over £15,000 of savings simply by sharing information on their purchasing of basic supplies and services, and moving all members to the supplier offering best value. Clustering also puts small organisations in a much stronger position to negotiate with potential sources of resource such as local infrastructure organisations, suppliers of support services and larger organisations with which they have business relationships.

For example, the members of the Nottingham Collaborate group were all also members of a wider floating support consortium which included a number of large RSLs. As a result of the Collaborate project, they were able to negotiate an arrangement whereby one of these larger partners provides them with health and safety premises audits carried out by a member of its in-house team. The same group was able to negotiate improved IT support by pooling their budgets and advertising a single tender to provide services to all three organisations. Download a copy of the tender specification.

The benefits of being part of a national project

One of the main benefits of being part of a national pilot programme was that it provided a framework which encouraged (or possibly forced) groups to keep things moving forward. One of the key lessons both from the Collaborate pilot programme, and from Bassac’s SWiM projects, was the importance of momentum. It is this externally-imposed discipline, as much as the availability of resources, which groups attempting to develop a cluster project entirely from their own resources might find it hardest to manage without.

If you are thinking about setting up your own cluster, you will need to be rigorous with yourselves about setting a timetable and sticking to it. At the same time, it is important to avoid being over-ambitious. Another key piece of learning from Collaborate 2 was that it is better to start with something modest and achievable, than to go for an over-ambitious goal initially. Groups that have achieved one positive outcome – even if it is relatively small – tend to be motivated to go on to further projects.