Government Crackdown on Late Payers Who Breach the Prompt Payment Code
May 2, 2019
The UK Government has taken a firm hand with firms that have consistently broken the Prompt Payment Code and they have been removed or suspended from the late payment scheme for failing to comply. The Prompt Payment Code was established as a voluntary scheme which firms sign up to as part of a...
Better Infrastructure Procurement – Applications Invited for Pilot Projects
Apr 25, 2019
A £3 million fund is now available for pilot projects to improve approaches to procurement in infrastructure, housing and local authority-led construction. Industry training board, the CITB, is seeking applications and expressions of interest as part of the Improving Performance Through Better...
Have Your Say About the 2014 Public Procurement Directives
Apr 11, 2019
The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) and the Council of European Municipalities are conducting a consultation on the 2014 Directives on Public Procurement. The Directives introduced a number of changes in the European legal framework for public procurement. They introduced new...
Circular Cities – Innovating To Tackle Plastic Waste
Apr 4, 2019
Registration for the ‘Circular Cities – Innovating to tackle plastic waste’ event at Scotland House (Brussels) on 16 May is now open. The conference is during #EUGreenWeek. Join others from EU institutions, cities, industry, civil society, academia and H2020 stakeholders for a one-day...
Public Sector Outsourcing To Commercial Companies – We Need More Training
Apr 4, 2019
Following the UK Government’s published guide, the Outsourcing Playbook, party-independent think tank, Reform, says expertise in procurement should be improved with more training for those tasked with doing deals often involving very large amounts of taxpayers’ money – rather than banning the...
Procurement Fraud – A Public Menace
Apr 4, 2019
According to new research from SAS, procurement fraud is widespread in the UK and the country lags behind many countries in its detection capabilities, being far more reliant on ineffective manual detection techniques than other nations. “A quarter of businesses (24 per cent) have been victims...
France – Making Public Procurement of Food More Sustainable
Mar 29, 2019
Online sustainable responsible business portal FOOTPRINT reports this week that France has set up a National Council for Collective Catering (CNRC) to ensure that at least half the food bought by the public sector in the country will be “organic, sustainable or under official signs of...
How Agile Procurement is Here to Change the Face of Government Contracting
Mar 29, 2019
How Agile project management practices can save the government contracting industry by allowing agencies to stay ahead of their problems
We can feel it every time we respond to a 200 page RFP or insist contracts can accommodate every possible future scenario. Public procurement has gone stale. The...
Interview With Ingrid De Doncker, Founder of Procure 2 Innovate (Ireland)
Mar 21, 2019
Procure 2 Innovate Project (P2I) connects competence centres for innovation procurement across Europe. Newly created Procurement Transformation Institute (PTI) has interviewed Ingrid de Doncker, founder of PTI (Ireland), on the Irish context of Innovation procurement, the role of the newly...
5 Tips for Better Communication Between Buyers and Suppliers
Mar 19, 2019
A guide to better industry communication to get the most out of your contracting outcomes
It’s a well-known problem in the government contracting industry that the lines of communication between the government agencies and the suppliers bidding for their business don’t always flow freely....
Social Value in UK Public Procurement
Mar 11, 2019
Peter Smith recently spent a stimulating morning at a round-table discussion with Demos, one of the more thoughtful political “think tanks” in the UK (cross-party from a political standpoint, innovative and research-driven).
He writes: While the broad topic was supposed to be “public...
New Meeting Rules for Effective Meetings Within Your Procurement Organization
Mar 11, 2019
Spoiler alert: it’s all about preparation.
“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and will never achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.’ – Dave Barry, American Humorist
Meetings: where minutes are kept and hours are lost....
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Policies and Regulations
It’s no surprise President Trump has been systematically dismantling President Obama’s executive orders, since taking office. Obama himself knew it was a possibility: Frustrated by …
Past performance is an important step in being successful as a federal government contractor. Once firms get into the mid-tier range, they normally have amassed …
A few months back, we published several articles about the very interesting – and somewhat shocking – court case around the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning …
Perspectives and Insights
I have been interested in the question of getting successful commercial companies, especially tech companies, to sell to the government from the time I was …
The Contractor Accountability and Transparency Act of 2017 (S. 651), introduced by Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Jon Tester, D-Mont., is yet another example of a …
Think you know all about public sector owned professional buying organisations (PBOs) and what they do? Here are ten interesting facts that might just surprise …