By Keith Heard This will be a defining year for public sector frameworks and their partners to deliver value for money, says NACF’s Keith Heard In my lifetime, the relationship between the public sector and its construction partners has perhaps never been under more scrutiny nor as essential to the health of the UK economy than during the covid-19 crisis. We have seen over the past 12 months not only the importance of the public sector in keeping the economy moving through sustained infrastructure investment but, equally, the level of public interest attached to its purchasing power. The ‘chumocracy’ debate stimulated by the covid-19 pandemic is a healthy exercise for any nation to engage in and one we as an industry must continue to consider while demonstrating the virtues of our procurement processes.