The Procurement Bill 2024

 

I am delighted to be announce that I shall be working with my colleagues at BIPSolutions to run a series of Roadshows about the Procurement Bill that is currently undergoing review in Parliament.  This will replace the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 that we have all been working under for almost a decade.

The plan is to have Royal Assent next year, and then have a six month period to allow everyone to understand the new rules before it goes live.  So, a year from new we should have a new public procurement regime.

If you are either a Public Sector buyer, or a supplier to the public sector then these changes are going to have an impact on you.

We are running a series of roadshows around England, firstly focusing on Buyers and then a follow up series focused on the implications for suppliers.  

The Buyer events are going start in Newcastle on Tuesday 3rd October, and then move on to Norwich on 10th October and Liverpool on 12th October with my as the host.  My colleague Gemma Waring will be hosting the events in Sheffield (19th Oct), Nottingham (31st Nov), Birmingham (7th Nov) and Bristol (21st Nov).

The supplier dates will be in November in Manchester and London (dates should be released early in October).

We have a range of great guest speakers to help talk through the Bill, and will have a panel discussion where we can address any other public procurement topics.  Questions will be welcome at the end of all sessions.

Fuller details including booking are at the link here.

Hope to see you there.

Training fees repeated

 Well inflation remains stubbornly high, and we are all going to have to get used to needing to negotiate higher fees/salaries to remain standing still.

I increased fees this time last year, and I have already booked in new rates for 2024 with some clients.

This is the new world we all have to get used to.  Even my window cleaner put prices up 20%.

After years of relatively low inflation, we are now in a second year of it being high, and consequently significant wage/cost inflation is going to happen.  We can pretend it wont, but the reality is that it has to.  This will mean added difficulties in agreeing fees/rates/prices with suppliers, but we should be getting used to this new normal.

Anyway, for new work coming in after September 2023, my rates are going up.  I imagine so are everyone elses.  Good luck to everyone on both sides of the table.

IChemE - What Engineers need to know about contracts - 14-16 June 2023

 We are running the popular What Engineers need to know about contracts course for the first time this year on 14-16 June 2023.  We are still running it online, but will at some point try face to face again.  Hopefully later this year.

The online course is 3 half days (mornings UK time).  It is based on our F2F course which is two full days, and so we had to strip it down a bit and go at pace when we did it in two half days.  To give us more time for discussion (and more content) we are expanding it to 3 half days.

Full details are at https://www.icheme.org/career/training/courses-a-z/what-engineers-need-to-know-about-contracts/