Entries by Peter Smith
The Proctopus Christmas Party and Awards – Including Bad Buying Failure of the Year!
Earlier this month the first Proctopus Christmas Party and Awards evening took place in the glittering surroundings of … Zoom. Proctopus is an informal group, largely LinkedIn based, that has […]
UK National Audit Office Looks at PPE Again – Just Why Did We Buy So Much?
The second UK National Audit Office report on pandemic procurement was issued recently. Titled “The supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 pandemic” it focuses entirely on PPE. […]
Look Who’s Talking – FACT360 AI Detects Potential Fraud
The fraud section in my new book was great fun to write. I know you can’t and shouldn’t call fraud “fun” in any sense, but the case studies I researched […]
More on the NAO Pandemic Procurement Report – Failure in the Cabinet Office
The NAO report on UK government procurement through the pandemic came out recently and we wrote about it here, focusing mainly on the PPE (personal protective equipment) issues it identified […]
NAO Pandemic Procurement Report Sticks the (Well-Judged) Boot In
This week saw the publication of the UK National Audit Office’s second report concerning government procurement during the pandemic. The first, all about ventilators, raised some interesting issues (which I […]
Advertising Spend Can Be Bad or Brilliant Buying – Consider Kevin the Carrot!
(Picture courtesy of my phone and a very old carrot from the back of the fridge) Let’s have a rest today from pandemic related buying failures, (potential) frauds and so […]
Why “VIP Routes” for PPE Suppliers Is a Slippery Slope
In our latest Bad Buying podcast, I interviewed Les Mosco who was Commercial Director at the Ministry of Defence for 7 years in the “noughties”, as well as being a […]
Should the UK Government Be Transferring More Risk To Track and Trace Suppliers?
In episode 4 of my podcast, which you can now access from this website (see links below) I talk about fraud and corruption in buying, topics that feature heavily in […]
Why Do Complex Programmes Like HS2 Always Overspend – Conspiracy or Cock-up?
I was interviewed about my new Bad Buying book by Jeremy Vine on his UK Radio 2 BBC show last week – over 7 million listeners apparently. He seemed to […]