Public buyers
Services for public buyers
For procurement leads and program leads in public organizations at every level: federal departments and agencies, Crown corporations, provinces and territories, and municipalities. The file can be information technology, professional services, construction, goods, or another commodity. It does not have to be a large system. Services are offered in English and French.
Internal bottlenecks slow down critical acquisitions. A senior-level team does the operational work. You make the decisions.
Who it is for
| Buyers | Federal departments and agencies. Crown corporations, referred to that way and not by name. Provinces and territories. Municipalities. |
|---|---|
| People | Procurement leads, and program leads who own the requirement. |
| Commodities | Information technology, professional services, construction, goods, and other commodities and services. |
| What stays with you | The decision, the approval, and the accountability for the award. The practice does not become the contracting authority and does not sign the contract. |
Strategic planning
Strategic planning is the work before a solicitation exists. The program has an outcome. Procurement has a set of instruments. Planning is the bridge: what is being bought, what success looks like, which instrument fits, and which risks a later reviewer will ask the department to explain.
Start here when the requirement is still being named, when more than one instrument could be used, or when the program and the contracting shop are not yet describing the same need.
What you should be able to hold at the end is plain. A requirement the program will sign. An instrument. The trade-agreement and security points that apply to that buyer. The decisions that are still open. The practice gets a decision to the point where a responsible official can make it. The official makes it.
Complex procurement
A file is complex when the dollar value, the stakeholders, the interfaces, the security, the term, or the rules would make a thin solicitation a liability. That can be an information-technology integration. It can also be construction, a goods contract, or professional services. Complexity is a property of the file, not of one commodity.
The published example is a legacy G7 financial system with strict interoperability requirements. The practice led the Agile procurement strategy for a $1.2B integration. The result was a successful vendor selection with zero trade challenges. The same standard of record applies when the file is not a system, and when it is not measured in billions.
Where an iterative approach is the right one, the practice runs iterative procurements that deliver results in weeks, not years. Where it is not the right one, a conventional file with a clean statement of work is the better record. The method follows the requirement.
Statements of work and evaluation grids
Statements of work, evaluation grids, and Treasury Board submissions are drafted to withstand scrutiny by the Canadian International Trade Tribunal. A complaint is usually won or lost in those documents.
A statement of work should say what the program needs in terms a bidder can price and an evaluator can score. An evaluation grid should follow from that statement. Mandatory criteria are pass or fail, and they are things the program is prepared to reject a bid over. Rated criteria say how points are earned, in language two evaluators will apply the same way.
The practice drafts both. The program owns the requirement. A criterion that cannot be tied to the requirement should not be in the grid.
Treasury Board submissions
Some files need Treasury Board authority before a contract can be awarded or a project can proceed. A TB submission is the document that asks for that authority. It has to agree with the procurement strategy, the cost, the risk, and the statement of work. A submission that tells a different story from the solicitation is difficult to defend later.
The practice drafts the submission as part of the file, not as a writing exercise after the procurement design is frozen. The department remains responsible for the approval.
Agile procurement
Agile procurement here means an iterative contract, and an evaluation built for that method. It is for a requirement that should not wait on one waterfall cycle. The published line is specific: iterative procurements that deliver results in weeks, not years.
Two further published files sit with this work, separate from the financial-system strategy above. For a recruiting platform for 300k+ users, the practice implemented one of the first true Agile contracting models in federal history, and delivered 100% compliance in record time. Separately, the practice drafted the complete Agile Procurement Framework and User Guide where a major department needed to modernize their procurement governance. Acquisition was standardized across the organization.
An agile file still has to survive a trade challenge. The method, the stages, and the way bids are compared have to be written down. Calling a conventional solicitation agile does not do that.
Governance and policy
Procurement governance is how an organization decides, documents, and repeats buying so the next file does not start from a blank page. It is the policy, the framework, and the user guide that contracting staff and program staff will actually follow.
The published example is the departmental policy reset: a major department needed to modernize their procurement governance. The practice drafted the complete Agile Procurement Framework and User Guide. The result was standardized acquisition across the organization.
Sample deliverables are available on request.
What the record supports
These are buyer-side figures and statements already published. They are not forecasts, and they are not supplier results.
| Spend managed | $3.5B+ |
|---|---|
| Experience | 15+ years |
| Clearance level | Secret / Top Secret. Two team members hold federal security clearances, one at Top Secret. |
| Efficiency | 10x. One expert consultant delivers the operational output of a full internal unit. |
| Trade agreements | 100% Trade Agreement compliant. |
| Files | The practice has managed the biggest files in Ottawa. |
Federal trade agreements that can apply, depending on the buyer and on coverage, include the Canadian Free Trade Agreement, the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement. Coverage is a question for the file, especially for a Crown corporation. The practice does not treat every public buyer as covered by every agreement.
Two team members hold federal security clearances, one at Top Secret. The same fact is in the buyer FAQ.
To start a buyer file, write to marco@getprocurement.ca or call 613-315-7390. Name the organization, what is being bought, and the decision you need. Do not send classified material by email.
Questions from public buyers. How an engagement runs. The three published engagements.