Sorry stadium saga embarrasses the procurement profession
Imagine you are running a high-profile tender for office supplies that has ended up in a straight contest between two vendors.
You are evaluating the offers when suddenly supplier A claims in the media its bid is far cheaper and a better deal than that of its rival bidder. Supplier B then starts talking to the press, insinuating its competitor represents a financially insecure option. Supplier A then ramps up the rhetoric further, claiming B’s bid is environmentally unsustainable. Outraged, B alleges A will not be able to meet its planned delivery schedule.
As a buyer, how would this make you feel? Is it the sort of professional approach you would expect from companies interested in working with you? Is this the sort of organisation you could build a successful partnership with in future?
Pity, then, the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC) that has had to deal with disgraceful conduct approximating this analogy from the two bidders to take over the 2012 stadium, West Ham United and Tottenham Hotspur football clubs. The OPLC is not responsible for the process degenerating into a public slanging match, but suffers the additional pressure the media storm generates. (The process does, though, underline the importance of having a clear, unambiguous specification from the outset.)
More importantly the unedifying spectacle has inadvertently embarrassed the reputation and standing of the procurement profession as a whole.
For many people the tender will be one of the few occasions a procurement exercise makes the front page of a newspaper or the bongs of an evening news bulletin. It accentuates the myth that suppliers must engage in a form of last bidder-standing gladiatorial combat where the content of bids is of little consequence compared to who can batter their opponent into submission. Is this the sort of thing that will attract people to work in the profession (well, maybe, but I’m not sure the profession will want those types of people)?
Both Spurs, the Hammers and their bid partners, should be ashamed of themselves. Projects of a similar scale and profile in future might want to add a clause asking suppliers to make no public comment during the bid process.
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Bidders’ hostility among themselves help the buyer know more about individuals’ inside problems. Despite nuisance so caused, the buyer, as outsider, will benefit. There is no smoke without fire. It is strategic for open tenders – advertised on newspapers for the public to offer.
All’s fair in love and football?
I reckon it is another possible side effect from the government buying process. you see the decision has not been made yet, only the ddecision who to recommend to the actual decision maker!!
That gives the other guy one last chance to push their bid and the only way they feel they can is to dicredit the ‘recommended’ bidder. Crazy.
Then you get the government buying rules of ‘openness’ meaning they must declare to the guy not recommended such detail about their choice that it sets themselves up. Amongst this information can be stuff incredibly sensitive and confidential to the bidder. great stuff!
Agreed on the clause to keep mum in the media. This one is also like the absolute mess that FIFA created with the bids for 2 World Cup tournaments and the media effects as a result. FIFA’s specification encouraged, and therefore wasted the time and the money, inappropriate countries to bid. Only at the end was it revealed that key criteria were to be a country which was developing in a football sense & to be in a region which had not hosted a World Cup before. This criteria would have ruled out England, USA, Spain/Portugal etc, however these countries were encouraged to bid because they believed strong capability to host the tournaments was a key criteria when it wasn’t. For years the media ran multitudes of coverage and the strong reactions to the outcome. FIFA did everything wrong as a buying organisation and deserve to receive sanctions, however they will get away with it apart from some reputation damage.
Interesting that anyone would try to portray this as a failure of (and therefore presumably the fault of) the public sector bidding process. The tactics have been deployed by the Directors/Owners of the clubs who are prominent business people. It reflects much more poorly on them than on OPLC. But then again I dont imagine it keeps them awake at night. Which is what might happen to the buyers in OPLC if they had behaved in such a manner.
Come off it, the procurement crime isnt Wet Sham or Spuds trying to get the best out of a one-off deal. Its that this white elephant was ever built in the first place.
It isn’t the process. People are responsible for their behaviours. It’s disappointing to think this is the kind of business behavioural set we’ve come to expect from the world of football. Normal rules don’t seem to apply, what a strange planet they seem to inhabit.