In April 2019, the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) reported a city council that had failed to meet tendering criteria as the organisation did not “carry out the appropriate procurement exercises on some contracts and failed to properly document others”.
Breaching procurement law
The council had been found to have failed to carry out procurement exercises for contracts that passed the relevant threshold value on several occasions.
An internal audit completed by the council’s chief auditor revealed that not all contracts allocated by the organisation had been compliant with procurement legislation.
CIPS reported that “one in five of the contracts examined, which represented more than £27m of expenditure in the past four and a half years, had not been placed on the legally required register”.
As it stands, legislation requires contracts valued at more than £50,000 for supplies and services, and £2m for works, must be published.
Better support for procurement professionals is required
In response to these findings, CIPS CEO Malcolm Harrison said:
“Incidents such as this highlight the need for professionally qualified procurement teams in place to improve governance and safeguard our organisations against risk.”
This is something Mr Harrison encouraged at Procurex National 2019. After presenting at the event’s Keynote Arena, he caught up briefly with Delta eSourcing’s content team.
Mr Harrison noted that one of the main challenges facing almost every procurement organisation is capability, and that moving forward the industry must support employees with the right training and tools that will enable them to complete each procurement process in the best possible way.
Stay compliant with Delta eSourcing
The case discussed above highlights how easy it can be for procurement teams to fall through the net when it comes to the rules around procurement.
If your organisation is looking for an eSourcing solution that will support your procurement team with their procurement strategy, our Delta modules have been created to track aggregated spend via change control.
Our contract management tool also enables you to export procurement details and publish them on your buyer portal to remain compliant.
The service that Delta provides also comes with a helpdesk team who can support your team to get started with their new eProcurement solution.
