Public Procurement and Property

Scottish Procurement quarterly vlog – February 2026

February 17, 2026 by No Comments | Category Procurement news, Scottish Procurement

We recently caught up with our Director, Nick Ford, to hear about some of the achievements Scottish procurement has seen over the past few months and gain a sense of what’s to come for Scotland’s public procurement community.

You can find out more in the video below. A transcript is available at the bottom of the page.

More information on the updates provided by Nick can be found below:

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

Please email enquiries to scottishprocurement@gov.scot

Subscribe to our blog to keep up to date with the latest news across the procurement community.

Single speaker transcript, Nick Ford: 

Welcome to my first vlog of 2026!

I hope you had a restful break and are feeling recharged for the year ahead. I wanted to kick things off by looking back at some of the achievements we’ve seen over the last quarter, and give you a sense of what’s to come for Scotland’s public procurement community.

October was a bit of a major milestone month. It marked the 20th anniversary of the Scottish Government’s National Procurement Conference at Procurex. If you were there, I hope you found it inspiring. I certainly did.

It remains Scotland’s flagship procurement event and a great opportunity to bring people together to explore emerging challenges, opportunities, showcase innovation and celebrate the impact our profession has across Scotland.

And speaking of celebrations, we also had the Go Awards Scotland where many of you were recognised for outstanding achievements.

It was fantastic to see so many examples of creativity and excellence across the sector, including the new categories for AI, driven transformation and collaborative procurement. Huge congratulations to everyone who was nominated or won an award on the night.

Your work really does set the bar for what great procurement looks like. I’m really pleased with the changes we have made to the Public Procurement Group, being the pivotal governance group for public procurement in Scotland.

I’m hopeful these changes, along with the earlier changes we made to the Procurement Supply Group, will better position us to drive forward and deliver the public procurement strategy for Scotland.

The first joint meeting of the new Public Procurement Group and Procurement Supply Group took place in January under our refreshed governance structure.

And we were really pleased to have Ivan McKee, the Minister for Public Finance, attend and emphasise procurement’s vital role in Public Service Reform, Fair Work, SME and third sector participation and progress towards Net Zero.

The meeting also covered updates on the Threshold Review, Source to Contract modernisation, and the Community Wealth Building Bill with discussions centering on improving efficiency, expanding shared services, strengthening early supplier engagement, and exploring national procurement models to support deeper supplier collaboration.

Speaking of the Threshold Review, the consultation we launched in October has now closed, and thank you very much for your views, whether that’s on raising the goods and services and works threshold, as well as the options for lowering the community benefits threshold.

Officials are now busy analysing all the feedback, so please keep your eye out for the analysis report in due course.

We also held our first round table of 2026, with the Minister joining the Business Services Association who are a member of the Procurement Supply Group forum. We covered a wide range of topics – from public procurement and the Threshold Review to Fair Work, construction and planning.

And then in November, we published a policy note covering updates to thresholds derived from the Government Procurement Agreement.

These are just routine adjustments required every two years to keep the regulations’ thresholds aligned with the World Trade Organisation’s Agreement on Government Procurement (the GPA).

So just to be clear, these are completely separate from the threshold consultation that we have undertaken.

We also refreshed our Community Benefits in procurement guidance, which you can find on our Sustainable Procurement Tools website.

This updated guidance strengthens how we support employment, skills and training outcomes through the public sector contracts and ensures we are delivering the best possible social value for communities right across Scotland.

Another big update was the launch of our refreshed Climate Literacy eLearning, also on the Sustainable Procurement Tools website.

This new version reflects current policy, future targets and real case studies to help  public bodies embed climate and circular economy thinking in their day to day procurement decisions.

I’m really pleased to confirm that the Source To Contract procurement notice went live at the end of January. Already more than 20 suppliers have shown an interest in the Tender for the PCS and PCS-T replacements. A great sign of strong market interest.

The team is now gearing up to the next set of deliverables and planning the next phase of the project.

A big thank you to everyone who’s been involved in this throughout the process to date, and I look forward to continuing with the programmes journey.

This year, we have already published three new policy notes, the first of which details how contracting authorities should notify Scottish Ministers when they publish their annual procurement reports for 26 and 27.

The second one provides advice on reserving contacts for certain health and social care services to qualifying organisations and the actions that are required to ensure organisations remain compliant with the legislation.

And the third notice provides guidance to public bodies on options available for dealing with bidders that may be involved in activities which constitute grave professional misconduct.

So please do check these out. And you can keep up to date with all our policy notes on the Scottish Procurement blog.

New Contract and Supplier Management guidance is also now available on the Procurement Journey website.

Supporting Scottish public sector organisations to manage contracts effectively from mobilisation through to exit.

So I would encourage you to review that and see where it can be used to support you and any current or future contracts.

So looking ahead, before the end of March we’ll be publishing the Scottish Ministers’ Annual Procurement report covering the period 2023 to 2024. A wealth of information, so please do look out for that.

It will bring together the outcomes reported by contracting authorities and showcase the real power of procurement across Scotland.

That’s all for now. Thank you for listening. 2026 is shaping up to be a year of real progress, and I’m looking forward to sharing more updates with you soon.

To stay up to date on public procurement please feel free to subscribe to our blog or connect with us on social media.

Thank you.

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