Procurement failure - Oxford

 Some good stuff in Supply Management.  

First, Oxford County Council reaching a settlement for £1.6m with a contractor.  The article is here.

A couple of points here, which I commonly raise with delegates.

Firstly, the cost to the council is significant and would pay the salaries of approximately 30 procurement staff.  Investing in high quality procurement staff can pay for itself - the problem is it pays for itself in cost avoidance, which is difficult to estimate.

Secondly, the council's legal team estimated chances of losing at 75% to 85%.  This may seem odd to people not used to legal cases, but the odds of winning or losing are rarely 100%.  You are never quite sure what the court will find.  (though see tomorrow's blog)  So a lot of decisions are made on a commercial basis rather than a legal basis - "we think we are right but the odds are not good so it is better to settle".

Another good article tomorrow.

Online Training courses

I have run quite a few online training courses recently, and now feel happy enough about the process to offer online training programmes to in-house clients.

Topics are of course for mutual agreement (the advantage of bespoke rather than off the shelf training), but training courses more or less ready to go are;

Reconnecting your Supply Chain
Public Sector Procurement
Procurement and Supply Chain Management
Managing Procurement Teams
Introduction to Contracts

If any are of interest, get in touch and we can have a chat.

some links on Force Majeure

Force Majeure is a pretty common discussion point at the moment thanks to Covid19.
The folks over at Supply Management magazine, the magazine for CIPS members, has run a number of useful articles that may be helpful.  In particular they point out that the doctrine of frustration may apply if you don't have a Force Majeure clause - or don't have a clause in it that specifically applies to Pandemics.

https://www.cips.org/supply-management/analysis/2020/march/coronavirus-what-you-need-to-know-about-force-majeure/

https://www.cips.org/supply-management/analysis/2020/march/coronavirus-ending-contracts-without-force-majeure/

If in doubt, have a look at your contracts - then talk to your Procurement Manager and lawyer  (I'd suggest that way round - it might be cheaper).

Eliminating PQQs - the consquences

I know I keep wittering on about this, but I believe that the elimination of PQQs will have the opposite result to that intended - increased participation by SMEs in public contracts.  Philip Prince of Constructionline takes a similar view in Supply Management Magazine.


http://www.supplymanagement.com/blog/2015/06/new-public-contracts-regulations-risk-increasing-the-burden-on-buyers-and-sme-suppliers