Public Procurement
Yesterday I looked into the main text of the draft Council of Ministers Resolution introducing mandatory green public procurement in Portugal. I had assumed that looking into it would be a two part affair. Turns out it will be a four part one instead since I keep finding stuff worth
Public Procurement
On my previous post about *that* train tender in Portugal, I argued that it was quite possible the contract involved a State Aid angle but stopped short of making a more definitive or certain claim. This was due to the issue of the economic advantage gained by the preferred bidder
Public Procurement
Next week I will be in Rome taking part on the 8th IMPPM Global Procurement Conference (July 6th and 7th) where on Thursday I will be sharing a session with Kirsi-Maria Halonen on competitive dialogue. These days I am more or less out of the traditional conference circuit and refrain
Public Procurement
This Monday I was cited again on Portuguese media about the illegality of the train tender for the new 117 trains that are being procured at the moment. This time, with three Portuguese colleagues. Two broadly agreed with me but a third argued that the tender is legal since i)
Public Procurement
“Gentlemen, there’s only two ways I know of to make money: bundling and unbundling.” - Marc Andreesen Over the last decade I have become increasingly concerned with the move to bolt on ever more objectives to be pursued by public procurement, from the compliance requirements of exclusion grounds to
Public Procurement
I spent some time over the last couple of weeks preparing my electronic procurement slides for some classes at the University of Belgrade and had a chance to look into eForms. My views about the lack of ambition of the current crop of electronic procurement related rules are not new,
Public Procurement
Having spent most of 2020 criticising the procurement response of the UK Government to the covid-19 pandemic, those decisions are now coming home to roost. Back in February we found out that £8.7B of the £12.1B of PPE purchased in 2020-21 was 'lost' and now we
Public Procurement
A couple of days ago I made reference to the Department for Health and Social Care annual report and its information about the losses on PPE. As it turns out the report contained more information related to public procurement warranting a comment. Once again buried deep in the report, the
Public Procurement
I have been thinking about the COVID-19 vaccination issues in the EU and guess that we can distill them to three crucial points: EU competences, procurement and lack of understanding of the real problem (production). First, there's the issue of EU competences which, in the area of health,
Public Procurement
I had the chance to speak virtually in two events this week, the first organised by Albert Sanchez-Graells from Bristol and Neli Garbuzanova about Healthcare procurement and commissioning during COVID-19. My short presentation is available here. I really like the narrow and tight focus of this event: 5 speakers, 90
Public Procurement
I have long argued that the procurement legal framework does not exist to enable great procurement, but to reduce the probability of really bad procurement being carried out. The cavalier approach taken by the UK Government in its COVID-19 related procurement shows the importance and value of the 'regular&
Public Procurement
As mentioned earlier in the blog, Portugal decided to change some of the rules regulating the use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication. At the time I warned the changes made a weak system even weaker and prone to abuse. Yesterday I got wind on Twitter of a contract