The Hooray and the No Way Of the Week

Today I had a chance to peruse the latest news headlines for Procurement, and I found two articles that peaked my interest.

One is a really positive move forward.

And the other is a “c’mon, really?!?” moment.

Let’s start with the good news:

From the Village of Lake George, New York (population 904) comes the good news that village procurement officials are now authorized to use a best value approach to procurements.

This is surprisingly progressive for a municipal government entity. State and city procurement organizations still hold steadfast to low cost takes all, even when it doesn’t make the best business sense.

The commercial world has been successfully using best value for some time but government entities are lagging far behind in using the best practice.

I’m happy for the Procurement Heroes of Lake George who now have a bigger sense of freedom in choosing the best supplier for the job. They also now have a higher sense of responsibility when documenting the results of an RFP, but once you get the hang of it, it’s really not so troubling.

Hat’s off to the Post Star.com for reporting this development that may be a “so what” for many of their readers, but to this certified procurement geek was like the sun shining on a cloudy day.

If any of the hardworking Procurement people in Lake George want some good examples of how to document a Best Value procurement in a government setting, reach out to me! ProcurementChronicles -at- Yahoo.com

And now for the less sunshiny part of this cloudy day. I stumbled across this fun little tidbit out of Northern Illinois University.

Seems that the Vice President of Administration is having a little difficulty.

He left a message on a cell phone that he thought belonged to a supplier. Alas, it was a wrong number.

In the message this VP just happens to discuss, albeit briefly, how to “get around the harsh constraints of the public procurement system.”

Whoops.

Whoever received this message found a way to report it.

If you want to hear the message in its entirety, here’s a link:

Listen here.

What troubles me the most about the message is he is referring to engineering and architecture projects. That is the last area any public procurement official wants to be fiddling around with, because that is where auditors look first. Construction and engineering have a long history of being commodities with some occasional questionable business practices.

I have no idea what might become of this situation, but as a veteran procurement person I see it as just another in a long line of indicators that the procurement function at every institution still has a lot of work to do.

As long as we are seen as a foot in the aisle, a burden, something to be circumvented, then we are not able to provide the value that I know Procurement can bring to every institution.

It’s our job as Procurement Heroes to help navigate those “harsh constraints.” It’s our job to do our best to work alongside our end users to make it easier, not harder.

It’s also our job to manage the heck out of our suppliers to be sure if one of our end users leaves a message like that then the supplier knows the right path and continues to work with procurement in an upfront and honest way.

We in Procurement don’t get it right all of the time, but when both parties work at it, some pretty amazing things can happen.

And thus wraps up both the agony and the ecstasy of the Procurement world.

Back to it Procurement friends. Those contracts are not going to write themselves!

Image found here.