The next CIPS open skills training I am running after Developing Contracts is Procurement Fundamentals. Again this is suitable for both public and private sector buyers, and for anyone who wants to understand what procurement is (hint: not just shopping or filling in forms). No prior knowledge is required.
Full details are here. Hope to see you there.
Sticking with the contracts theme... I am also delighted to be running some open skills training courses for CIPS online this year.
The first of these is Developing Contractual Agreements on 6th March 2024 - full details are here.
Brief description: "This interactive course is particularly relevant for those who are new to procurement. It will provide an awareness of the essential legal principles governing contracts, not just to solve disputes but more importantly, how to avoid them. It considers issues relating to the setting up of contracts and key contract clauses."
The course is suitable for both public and private sector buyers, and indeed for anyone who wants an insight into contracts whatever their role.
As well as all the exciting stuff around the new Procurement Act 2023, we haven't forgotten the general skills required for Procurement.
One of my mantras is that Procurement is just the other side of the table from Sales. But somehow they are seen as commercial and we are just seen as clerical. Not accurate!
(though my wife who works in sales thinks her company sometimes thinks they are just clerks too).
So we are running a range of courses for Buyers to help provide all the business and commercial skills that they need.
The first one is Developing Commercial Skills for Buyers online in 7th March 2024 - run by my colleague Gemma
Details are here.
Apologies for the change of date and presenter (no longer 27th February 2024).
I'm still writing it though.... which I guess may NOT be a selling point, but you are warned.
This ever popular course has been revised to 3xhalf day courses, and will be run on 10/11/12 July 2024.
A fuller face to face event can be run face to face as an in-house event (we have 2 in January 2024!)
As always full details can be found on the IChemE site here. AND there is 25% off until 2nd Feb 2024.
Running it over 3 half days gives us a little more breathing space and has allowed me to drop in some more case studies and examples. And some links to some of the other useful IChemE courses such as the one on Project Management and the one on the Model forms of contract (neither of which I run so you can believe me when I say they are good).
Please note that this is entitled "Engineers" and despite being run by IChemE is not just relevant to Chemical Engineers. Or indeed just to Engineers.
Hope to see you (online) then.
If you are wondering if we will return it to face to face open courses in the future? Well maybe. If there is demand. So if that is what you want, please let us know. But we intend to carry on online for the future to help reach international engineers.
As mentioned in other posts, there is going to be a lot of activity in 2024 around the new Procurement Act 2023.
And I'm going to be part of it.
As well as my PAWA Consulting programmes, I am delighted to work with BIP Solutions on a range of events building on our Understanding the Procurement Act Roadshows.
I shall be kicking off with Understanding the Procurement Act for Buyers online on Tuesday 6th February 2024.
My colleague Gemma Waring will be running it on April 17th.
We shall also be running events focusing on what it means for Suppliers (cunningly entitled Understanding the Procurement Act for Suppliers - 30th January and 4th April 2024, both run by Gemma).
We hope you can make it, and hope it will answer your questions.
Fuller details will be available here.
It is the time of the year when we all start to think that we shall go on a journey of self-improvement.... Good luck.
Anyway I thought I would share some of my recent reading in the hope that others will find them relevant, interesting or just entertaining.
Procurement:
- Well the Procurement Act 2023, obviously. Many of us will be reading it a lot this year!
- Peter Smith is a former CIPS President who is now working on Procurement with Purpose which I think laudable. His newsletters are always interesting too - not least because of the new music discussion involved. Speaking of which, MY favourite new band in 2023 were Pale Blue Eyes - Shoegaze is BACK I tell you. Back! And the Slowdive album (everything is alive) was great too, though my favourite album was Fuse by Everything But the Girl.
General Non-fiction:
- Material World by Ed Conway, a consideration of 6 essential materials. Ok, I am a former materials scientist working in supply chain, so I guess I AM the target market. BTW I also want to read a book about the end of ICI. In his references he suggests a free PDF Sustainable Materials: With Both Eyes Open from Cambridge University, which I also heartily recommend.
- I do not Black Holes; the key to understanding the universe by Profs Brian Cox and Jeff Folshaw unless you already have some understanding. But if you do, it is super.
- How Big Things Get Done by Bynt Flyberg is brilliant about projects and project management and I shall be wittering on about it at every opportunity in 2024.
- What If 2 by Randall Munroe adds some much needed whimsy to the big questions.
- I'd never actually read The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx. Much shorter than I imagined. Things have changed in 150 years, but maybe not as much as you would expect.
- Death comes to us all, and All the Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell is an intriguing exploration of something most of us care to avoid thinking about. Incidentally her dad Eddie Campbell wrote and drew From Hell with Alan Moore.
- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemann tells us that we have 2 modes (fast and slow) and how that changes our decision making processes, and our decisions. TLDR Fast is the fight/flight/freeze type response, and until we can move beyond that we cannot make rational choices. Helps explain a lot. You may not need the whole book...
And finally Dollar Street from Hans Rosling's foundation helps us to really see what life is like for people around the world, rather than the perceptions we gain from TV. Invaluable. Take some of their quiz and see for yourself how you have an overly pessimistic view of the world. (or at least most people do - and there is still MUCH room for improvement).
Fiction:
- Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway was a great melding of SF and noir crime fiction. He is a friend of William Gibson, and the son of John Le Carre.
Well it is going to be an interesting year - with elections in the UK and USA (and many other countries too).
The global and European economies are far from strong, though the USA seems to be doing just fine.
So, and interesting time for procurement - and especially for Public Procurement in the UK as the Procurement Act 2023 comes into force in October 2024. I shall be doing a lot of events around that, so please do keep an eye out and come along.
All the best to everyone.
As John Lennon said, let's hope it is a good one.
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