NHS Procurement Platform – Was it Bought Properly?
The UK National Health Service is one of the largest organisations in the world in terms of number of employees and its running cost. Whilst it is a single organisation […]
Entries by Peter Smith
M&S Buys Logistics Supplier – Why?
Supply Management reported this week that retailer Marks and Spencer (M&S) is buying Gist, a logistics business. Gist apparently do much of the food logistics work for M&S, but clearly […]
Thurrock Council Comes Up with a New Type of Bad Buying
Having spent several years researching, writing and now promoting the Bad Buying book, I thought I’d heard pretty much everything in terms of public sector organisations finding ways of wasting […]
“Give Us More Money” – Handling Professional Services Fee Demands
Professional services firms are aksing for big fee increases. How can you resist their demands?
Good Tender Documents – More Important Than You Might Think
Making sure your tender documents are effective is a more important skill that many realise – get it wrong and you can look pretty stupid!
UK Politicians Not Impressed with Army Ajax Programme
We wrote about the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) Ajax armoured vehicle fiasco almost a year ago. Now, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), made up of politicians from all parties, […]
Transformative or Tedious? The New UK Procurement Bill
The new UK public procurement legislation has been laid out in a Bill now which is being discussed and revised in the House of Lords. Leaving aside political comments, most […]
Why is the USA Running Out of Baby Formula Milk?
Quite a few stories of procurement and supply chain failure we hear (and quite a few of those included in my Bad Buying book) have at least an element of […]
Fairness in Procurement
Most people see government buying as something rather dull and bureaucratic, but get it wrong and it can cost the taxpayer a fortune. So everyone should be interested in the […]
How will CIPS measure the success of its big changes?
A few weeks ago now, CIPS (the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply) announced the result of the consultation process on proposed governance changes. It proved to be a vindication […]