Archive

Collaborative Procurement For The Construction Industry

The Centre for Built Britain has released a white paper on Procurement Strategies for incentivising collaborative delivery, which explores how a collaborative approach to procurement can help to deliver projects better, faster, greener, and safer with a focus on net-zero targets and building safety. The paper invites clients and industry to examine and adopt their Integrated Information ...

MoD £2 Billion in Nuclear Contracts.

Britain's Ministry of Defence announced this week that over £2 billion worth of defence contracts have been awarded to start the third phase of its submarine nuclear deterrent programme termed 'Dreadnought'. London-listed companies, BAE systems (BAES.L) and Rolls-Royce (RR.L), have received the contracts, the MoD said in a statement, adding that the investment was part of a planned £10 ...

Measuring Sustainable Public Procurement

One of the projects we are most proud of is working with The Open Contracting Partnership to create a Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) toolkit. The toolkit provides practical insights for the day-to-day needs of procurement professionals on adopting and measuring sustainable procurement.In this article we look at measuring sustainable public procurement. What is 'sustainable public procurement' uptake? Sustainable ...

New Support For Canadian SME Traders.

The Government of Canada recently released its 2022 Federal Budget. Within it was an announcement of an intention to establish a Trade Remedy Counselling unit (TRC) to improve access to Canada’s trade remedy system for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Canadian producers can use the trade remedy system to request an investigation against specific countries whose exporters ...

Progressive Procurement Yields Results

Last year, we shared the results of the landmark Aboriginal Procurement policy (APP), first introduced by Western Australia’s Premier, Mark MacGowan in 2018. The objective of the policy was to improve outcomes for Aboriginal businesses in the state, with targeted measures to increase contract awards, and therefore, economic benefit to the community. The Aboriginal Procurement Policy Third ...

Cutting Carbon Is A Procurement Issue

Just a few months ago, we shared an article on findings by the Boston Consulting Group and the World Economic Forum that showed procurement is responsible for 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions, globally. Their study reported that governments spend $11trillion(USD) annually-or 15% of global GDP, on procurement every year. Our own prior study, tracked the value of global ...

OECD: Promoting Gender Equality Through Procurement

COVID-19 showed that women have been disproportionately affected by the economic and social fallout from the pandemic(OECD, 2020), as the pandemic exacerbated existing structural inequalities and gender norms (United Nations, 2020). We know that public procurement can directly affect the quality of life and well-being of citizens through government procurement strategies, practices, and systems. Through gender-responsive public ...

Progress In The Open Government National Action Plan

We’ve been working closely with The Cabinet Office to develop and refine a robust and repeatable methodology for the identification and matching of tenders, as part of the Open Government National Action Plan. The Cabinet Office has also been working with central government departments to monitor performance on the completeness of publication of award notices as well ...

Consultants Still Winning Huge Government Contracts.

Consultancies have won contracts worth more than £700m from UK government in Covid related contracts since the start of the pandemic in 2020. Concerningly, many of the contracts were awarded without competitive tender. The Financial Times has previously reported on Whitehall departments facing criticism for a “worrying lack of transparency” over many of the deals, which include supporting ...

Two Solutions To A Hard Problem

In our last post, I suggested that public procurement has a big problem: an inability to account for, or record failure. Today I’m going to suggest a possible solution. One that would provide the sort of insight that we can use to understand contract failures in procurement. We’re proposing two initiatives: In addition to what we would consider ...

Public Procurement Has A Big Problem

The world has changed. We live in a world where commerce, industry, and work are powered by data. Performance is measured and judgments on success and failure are often obvious to all. This is not true of public procurement, which rarely measures or reports on performance. In simple terms, Governments find it too hard to accurately report on the ...

Ukrainian Invasion & UK Procurement

Last week, the UK Government released a Procurement Policy Note (PPN) that sets out how contracting authorities can further cut ties with companies backed by the states of Russia and Belarus. It applies to: all central government departments their executive agencies non-departmental public bodies Departments bodies and agencies that fall under the above are considered ‘In-Scope Organisations’ and ...

Aviation Procurement Inquiry

The Defence Committee, made up of a number of MP’s appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration, and policy of the Ministry of Defence and its associated public bodies, has announced the first of two inquiries into aviation procurement The first inquiry will consider “strategic context, existing contracts and capabilities, and the impact ...

EU Medical Procurement Recommendations

The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) has released a paper that examines procurement practices across the EU in their delivery of high-quality medicines for patients. The EFPIS represents the biopharmaceutical industry operating in Europe. Through its membership of 36 national associations, 39 leading pharmaceutical companies, and a growing number of small and medium-sized enterprises, EFPIA’s ...

Aus. Audit Office Taking Submissions

A few months ago we wrote about the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) investigation into the procurement practices of government-funded infrastructure. The ANAO has now launched a new inquiry into the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) and their procurement of ICT-related services. The DTA came under fire back in 2020 by the ANAO for the way it established ...

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