July 23, 2013
Government report highlights failings in UK public sector procurement
In the wake of a number of recent procurement failures including the G4S and Serco overcharging fiasco, the UK Government has published a highly critical report of the way it buys some £227 billion of goods and services annually. The report from the Public Administration Committee (PASC) says that in spite of steps to improve procurement which include using better data, aggregating demand across departments and renegotiating with major suppliers, the number of failures remains conspicuously high. The G4S and Serco contracts with the Ministry of Justice, under which payments were made regardless of the service being delivered, are the most high profile examples but the report indicates that problems are widespread.
June 10, 2013
NeoCon and ThinkFM offer two different views of the facilities management elephant
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Furniture, Workplace design
This week sees two events taking place on opposite sides of the pond that should hold a mirror up to the way we currently design and manage workplaces. In Chicago, it’s time for NeoCon, the annual office furniture behemoth held in the vast Merchandise Mart and attracting some 40,000 visitors, while in London it’s the distinctly low-key Think FM conference from the BIFM held at the Royal College of Physicians – for today only, as they say. While these are two very different events in terms of scale, content and format and both are nakedly commercial, only one strikes me as particularly meaningful. And even that is only about the meaning of one part of the facilities management elephant.
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