Quality and Price are not necessarily linked.

The School of Life is basically about the philosophy of living.  Now, you might think that many of us are too busy to even think about that - they have thoughts on that too.

I just came across an article of theirs that touches on that old problem for procurement - things that are more expensive are not necessarily better than things that are cheap.  My wittering about oil the past few days is a good example - the "free" oil is not inferior to the oil that was being sold for $70/barrel earlier in the year.

We do tend though to imbue more expensive things with more value, and value of course is often subjective rather than objective.

It is often difficult to work with our colleagues and make sure that we are getting the right specification, and not just using price as a proxy for Quality.

Anyway, the article is here - part of a much longer series.

Procurex - themes

Procurex was its usual success. Thanks to anyone who went to one of my sessions. The last one was on Risk Management, which in the week of the Japanese earthquake was a salutary reminder of the need for contingency planning.

Obviously my perceptions are my own, and I had little time to see the formal presentations but I found three key themes recurring;
- the need to improve the quality of tender submissions
- the tightness of budgets including travel to a free conference
- Category Management

The category Management theme was an interesting one, and talking to Pro5 I think is one that will be taken on from the OGC frameworks by a number of regional government bodies. It is a good and sensible approach, though for the public sector perhaps it cannot be persuded as aggressively as it is by our leading supermarkets.

Training Event - Newcastle

I shall be running the Quality and London 2012 workshops again for BiP Solutions on Thursday 26th November 2009, at the Hilton Newcastle Gateshead Hotel, which is actually in Gateshead. The event in Leeds had an interesting mix of delegates and both sessions had lively debates. I look forward to similar in Gateshead.

Booking is £75 for each event, details in previous blog.

Training events - Leeds - 2012 and Quality

I shall be running 2 training events for BiP Solutions in Leeds on Wednesday 18th November
The first is "Using Quality Standards to create Competitive Advantage", and the second is "Winning Business through London 2012".

You can attend either event or both, and they are being held at the Jury's Inn, Leeds. Cost is £75 for each half day session.

They can be booked by clicking here.