Public Procurement and Property

Scottish Procurement Vlog – 2024

June 6, 2024 by Teigan Kelly No Comments | Category Procurement Journey, Procurement news, Scottish Procurement

Our Director, Nick Ford, returns with his first vlog of 2024! In this edition, Nick provides an update reflecting on the first few months of the year – highlighting key achievements, events, publications and successes from across the procurement community.

Nick also shares some of the events and publications you can look forward to seeing in the upcoming months.

Watch the video below, a transcript for this video is also available at the bottom of the page.

If you would like to know more about some of the topics Nick covered in this video, please visit the links below:

• Procurement activity: annual report 2021 to 2022
• Procurement: SME and third sector action plan 2024-2026
• Public Procurement and Property Civil Engineering Framework – blog
• Public procurement strategy: 2023 to 2028
• Public Procurement and Property Public Procurement Strategy for Scotland – One year on

For further information on public procurement in Scotland please visit www.gov.scot/procurement

Please email enquiries to scottishprocurement@gov.scot

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Single speaker transcript, Nick Ford:

Hi everyone. Welcome to my first vlog of 2024, highlighting what we’ve achieved over the first quarter of the year and taking a look at what’s coming up.

Obviously we’ve got some breaking news. I’d like to welcome Mr. McKee as the Minister for Public Finance and as the Minister responsible for procurement. We will be working with the Minister over the coming weeks on his priorities and stakeholder engagement. I’m sure the Minister is looking forward to reconnecting with the Scottish procurement community.

I would also like to thank Mr. Arthur, Minister for Employment and Investment, for his support to procurement whilst in his previous role. So looking back, we’ve published our Annual Ministerial Report on Procurement Activity in Scotland for 2021-2022, again, demonstrating the power of procurement.

Highlights include over £16 billion of public procurement spend on goods and services, which is up £1.5 billion on the previous year, as well as contributing around £7.5 billion to the Scottish GDP and delivering around 130,000 jobs. We saw increased work placements and apprenticeships delivered across Scotland and it’s fantastic to see these figures, whilst only a snapshot, my thanks goes out to all of you and your organisations for making these impressive impacts.

The report highlights that 55% of every pound spent with suppliers in Scotland went to an SME, but we continue to look and build on these figures and I am pleased that the Scottish Government published our SME and Third Sector Action Plan. With a goal of strengthening and reiterating our commitment to SMEs and the third sector organisations, as well as setting out how we will continue to collaborate with industry and the wider public sector in Scotland.

The impactful figures in these reports really do showcase the real power of procurement and a big thank you to all of you as Heads of Procurement for publishing your annual procurement reports for 2022-2023 along with your procurement strategies. These are a rich source of information for buyers and suppliers and provide valuable information which enables us to produce the Annual Ministerial Report.

These reports and revisions not only benefit those who are tasked with implementing them, they also benefit suppliers and a wide range of stakeholders and communities, providing a powerful source of insight, enabling organisations to anticipate needs, allocate resources and prepare ahead of publication of tenders and procurement activity, helping us to deliver for the people of Scotland.

Following a successful period of collaboration across the Scottish construction industry, Scottish Government established our first National Civil Engineering Framework in March. It’s a major step forward and there were a number of factors built in that will continuously improve construction procurement across the Scottish public sector.

Unbelievably, it is one year since we launched the first Public Procurement Strategy for Scotland, an ambitious blueprint for Scotland’s future, providing a clear vision for Scotland’s public procurement community to align to. And again, thanks to the Heads of Procurement across Scotland, we have just published a one-year-on update on how it is being implemented with some really great case studies.

So that’s looking back, what have we got coming up?

Well we’re already into conference season, following the successful P4H conference.

Along in June, we have the Meet the Buyer Event National, which is in Hampden Park, Glasgow. These all provide a great opportunity for businesses, social enterprises and third sector organisations to engage with Scotland’s public sector.

Well, that’s all for now. Make sure you’re following us on our blog and social media to keep up to date with what’s going on.

I’ll be back with a further update in the summer.

Thank you

Tags: #PowerOfProcurement, Scottish Procurement

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