Shaun McCarthy is Chair of the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012 and a founding director of Action Sustainability. He spent 8 days in Beijing during the Olympics in search of lessons to help make London 2012 the most sustainable games ever.

Commenting on my visit to the Beijing Olympics, the BBC recently reported: “Shaun McCarthy is one visitor to the Beijing Games who has more important matters on his mind than the triumphs & disasters of a mere sporting competition. As Chair of the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, he has an eye on a far greater prize.” It’s true, I was able to cheer on Team GB here and there, but I spent the majority of my time studying the Games’ sustainability practices and what London can learn from them.

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Maybe it’s election fever on both sides of the border that has me thinking about promises of “cutting government inefficiency”. Invariably, when the leaders have been chosen, the procurement or purchasing functions are squeezed for their contributions.

But what does an effective and efficient procurement function look like? Well, for the last 13 years, the National Purchasing Institute has tried to codify it. Read the rest of this entry »

Procurement Leaders opened its latest issue with the words “Good news, we’re in recession”. I’ve long agreed with this view, as you know, so it’s good to hear the likes of Jason Smith, Principal Advisor of KPMG’s procurement advisory service, reported in Procurement Leaders on the subject:
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I’ve recently had some discussions regarding the Construction Sector Transparency Initiative. The purpose of which is to promote increased transparency and accountability in publicly financed construction projects around the world. It does this through the public disclosure of information – such as publishing government contracts online.

I profess no experience in the degree of corruption in construction (or any really) contracts in developing nations. But if someone is advocating for the process stewards, is anyone worrying about the business outcome? Read the rest of this entry »

We launched a new kind of eAuction format just under a year ago… A multi-directional eAuction.

Multi Directional Reverse eAuctions are useful when you have some elements you want suppliers to bid down (e.g. unit cost) and others you want to bid upwards (e.g. a rebate, marketing money etc). Without multi-directional eAuctions you have to find some complicated way of calculating net prices and having suppliers input those net prices into the auction. With multi-directional eAuctions this is all taken care of by the system. Read the rest of this entry »

First, let’s start from the beginning. Why is it that sustainable procurement in a public sector context is a big deal? The short answer is that the sum total of all government expenditures in Canada is often quoted to be $100 billion. With that kind of clout, suppliers may have the impetus they need to make sustainable goods and services their default offering, rather than a custom offering. Read the rest of this entry »

I am not a big fan of reverse Dutch auctions on the internet, from either the buyer’s or the seller’s point of view.

Dutch auctions were initially invented and adopted to speed up the sale of flowers in Amsterdam. Potential flower buyers would sit in a room which contained a clock. The clock would initially show a very high price - much higher than any flower buyer would be prepared to pay. The price shown on the clock would then tick downwards until it reached a price that one buyer was happy with. The buyer would press a button to “stop the clock” and could buy as many lots of flowers as they wanted at the price shown on the clock. If more flowers remained to be sold then the clock would continue downwards until all the flowers had been sold.

Software providers have adapted this kind of auction to internet procurement auctions, but the practical implementation leads a lot to be desired. Read the rest of this entry »

Much investment has been made to centralize procurement and purchasing within organizational boundaries. Yet, much work remains to wring out savings across organizational boundaries. Read the rest of this entry »

Procurement professionals don’t have it easy. Not only are they responsible for managing transaction risk, but they must also advise on structuring the transaction to get the desired business outcome.

A good guide to assessing whether your Request for Proposal (RFP) will achieve the desired business outcome is to apply a risk-based test. Generally, risks may be considered to be an adverse event that negatively affects the business outcome for the project. Read the rest of this entry »

The District of Columbia is proving that the use of Web 2.0 tools can bring greater transparency, efficiency and competition to a procurement – at virtually no cost. And the tools are simple enough that anyone with moderate internet skills would be able to implement them. Read the rest of this entry »