Rising to the challenge
I had the pleasure to attend the second day of Procurex National in Birmingham, at which the Rt Hon Francis Maude MP set the scene for the next few years in public sector procurement. And what a scene he set. A powerful speaker with a lot of charisma, he sounded like he meant business in more than a figure-of-speech way.
Maude wants us to play a vital role in changing public sector culture and supplies signposts and tools to help. Signposts are: competition inclusive of SMEs, transactional procurement replaced by relationship building, sustainability, efficiency and the social value bill. The tools are: a simplified PQQ process, an increased number of open procedures, supplier engagement prior to the procurement process, use of the Prior Information Notice (PIN) when advertising in the OJEU and, therefore, better planning and forecasting. And all of it underpinned with robust data and reporting systems.
I feel inspired, but can already hear my peers saying how difficult they believe this might be in practice. Simplified PQQs can lead to increased risks when tendering within the NHS landscape. And taking into consideration the social value bill’s aspirations might cause all sorts of difficulties that we cannot even envisage yet and possibly add commercial cost to offers. Sustainability might be a proven innovation driver (see for example, Dr Elvira Uyarra, University of Manchester – The Use of Public Sector Procurement to Support Innovation and Economic Growth) but evaluation of any element of sustainability, whether environmental, economical or social, is not easy and definitely not straightforward. New tools are required and everyday intellectual effort needed.
It will not be easy to be creative and courageous after years of following strict, often misunderstood, procurement processes. The time has come to embrace the uncomfortable social aspects of any new commercial activity and decisively respond to Maude’s call for public procurement power to generate social value and economic development.
And what I like the most is the fact that nobody is giving us an algorithm of how this should be done.
Let’s make it happen.
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If you were to travel at 80mph how long would it take you to travel 80 miles?
Positively embracing the impact of transformational procurement synergies, we must mediate via cutting-edge stakeholder interfaces that it is 58 minutes
Mr Speed and Mr Slow
Why not to agree on medium variation and make it in 59 minutes!
Mr Slow – are you really Felix CHAN in disguise?
The last government was the 1st one to recognise the power of procurement to further their agenda & it introduced lots of extra objectives for procurement teams eg sustainable goals etc. During that period, in my last role as CIPS Director of Professional Practice, we stressed to government ministers that they need to priotirise all the required procurement objectives & not leave that to procurement teams. That issue still applies to the current situation.
I am sure there is more work for Government with reference to prioritising required procurement objectives however ‘make it happen’ sounds to me like a green light for procurement teams to use their creativity and intelligence. Government is there to set direction and I think they are doing it quite well so far.
Given Maude’s recent “advice” on the storage of highly combustible fuel within domestic environments, I would suggest that the credibility of his views on supply chain management has been somewhat damaged. Perhaps he was being innovative but an algorithm isn’t required to understand the folly!
Well, it is true. Cabinet Minister gave a careless advice, but I am always perplexed when people forget that they also have responsibility to think for themselves. And this is not to say that the tragic event widely publicised by media could have been avoided if Francis Maude exercised social considerations. But I would not go as far as undermining his credibility to change the public sector procurement culture.