A Bad Buying Play in One Act
(Peter is sitting at his computer, shopping on Amazon. The CEO, Shirley, enters his office). Hi Peter, how’s that big project going? I’m pleased to see that you’re taking personal […]
Entries by Peter Smith
My Sad Story of Sausage-Related Buyer’s Remorse
The Manchester Christmas Market has moved from the spacious Albert Square, which is being dug up, to several different pedestrian streets around the centre. That works well in the sense […]
Sheffield Container Park Failure – Classic Bad Buying
Sheffield Council has been dysfunctional for some time, and will always be remembered as the council that decided thousands of mature trees would be destroyed in order to make pavements […]
US Government Takes Down Procurement Fraudster
This story from the Homeland Security Today website dates from a couple of months ago, but it is an interesting procurement fraud case, as it does not involve any internal […]
Babylon’s Burning… the Story of the Failed “AI” Health App
The Sunday Times has really got into its investigations recently, and after its excellent expose of the UK’s HS2 rail programme, last week it looked at another issue with a […]
We Need a Review of HS2
Last week the Sunday Times ran an expose of the UK’s HS2 rail project. The programme is being severely curtailed now due to massive over spending against the budget. Over […]
Coldplay go Legal – Dodgy Specifications Involved!
Coldplay and their manager are suing each other – and an expensive error in a specficiation is part of the dispute.
Why Is the UK so Bad at Capital Programmes?
It was tempting to write again about the HS2 rail programme given recent events and the question of whether it is going to ever get to Manchester – or indeed […]
Bad Buying in Birmingham?
England’s second largest city, Birmingham, is going bust, and there are allegations of dodgy procurement practices too.
Too Soon for 30% Weighting for Social Value in Tenders
I spoke recently at the UK Universities Procurement conference and as usual, had some interesting conversations around the margins of my session. In one such discussion, a sustainability person from […]