Conflicts of Interest – Be Alert !
Conflicts of interest lie behind many cases of procurement corruption and indeed other “corruption” in its widest sense. Often, these are not the highest profile or most serious examples – […]
Entries by Peter Smith
Spend £5B with Private Hospitals? Hang on a Minute, Treasury says…
We’re seeing so many interesting procurement and supply chain issues during the pandemic, but focus tends to shift week by week. We’ve had the challenge of finding more ventilators, which […]
Public Procurement in the Pandemic – Is it Who You Know, or What You Know?
Yesterday, The Times published a long article looking at how PPE (personal protective equipment) has been supplied to NHS hospitals and other locations during the pandemic. Unlike most articles on […]
Bad Buying to be published in October 2020 by Penguin Business
(From the Penguin website) Organisations large and small spend up to 90% of their budgets on external suppliers of goods and services. Huge amounts of money flow between firms, yet […]
The Chris Grayling Probation Services Farewell Tour Rumbles On ….
The Guardian newspaper reported yesterday: “Ministers are considering renationalising the entire probation service in England and Wales, the Guardian understands, in the latest twist in a long-running saga to unwind […]
Are We Seeing Pandemic-Related Bad Buying?
The pandemic crisis broke just as I was signing off the proof copy for my new book, “Bad Buying – How organizations waste billions through failures, frauds and f*ck-ups“. I […]
Fraud and Corruption – Sack the CFO!
Unfortunately, fraud and corruption are common in the business world, including in many large and well-known firms, as well as in governments the world over. Literally every day you could […]
Have You Heard the One About the Irish Government Printer?
The state-of-the-art, whizz-bang, latest technology printer that the Irish government bought in 2018 was going to produce wonderful documents at, one assumes, a competitive cost. The Komori equipment is highly […]
Grenfell Tower – Procurement Rules were Circumvented
The public inquiry into the tragic Grenfell Tower fire in London, which killed 72 residents in June 2017, has heard that procurement rules were circumvented to avoid an open tendering […]
Welcome to Bad Buying
Organisations waste time, money and resources buying goods and services they don’t really need, or they buy the wrong products, or pay more than they should. Sometimes they don’t even […]