Developing Contract Management & Commercial Skills in Local Public Services

Contract management and commercial skills were recently highlighted as requiring specific attention for public contracting authorities in the Government's Transforming Public Procurement Green Paper.

In this seminar, we invite you to listen to examples of programmes and initiatives that encourage better contract management and commercial practices in public services, as well as consider how organisations might better monitor and benchmark commercial capability and performance.

You will have the opportunity to consider your own organisation’s maturity in contract management and commercial practices, as well as a chance to discuss with colleagues at the seminar what steps might be taken to collectively upskill the sector to improve outcomes in these areas.

What’s on the agenda?

Peter Schofield, Manchester City Council, will be chairing the event.

Kieron Dennett, Leeds City Council, has been invited to provide a local authority perspective on contract management. Leeds City Council will share a summary case study of their approach to management of PFI contracts and the benefits they have achieved. Kieron will also be sharing the current work in progress of developing a council-wide best practice approach to contract management, and their plans in relation to CM processes and systems.

Georgia Rudin, LGA, has been invited to share an update about the Commercial Continuous Improvement Assessment Framework. Georgia will discuss what has been done so far and what the LGA hope to achieve.

David Crowe, Local Partnerships, will join us to share the work they are doing on developing a Local Government version of the Outsourcing Playbook training.

Who should attend?

This session will be of interest to anybody who is interested in how contract management and commercial skills can be improved in the local public sector, and the advantages that a focus on these skills can bring. This includes for example, any colleagues with an interest or brief in contract management, procurement, commissioning, commercialisation, social value, supplier engagement, or local economic development.

Anyone from the public sector can attend. Individuals from an iNetwork member organisation can attend the session free of charge. Individuals from the public sector who are not part of the iNetwork partnership (subscribing member 2021-22) can attend at a cost of £199.00 plus VAT.

Suppliers and other individuals from the private sector are not permitted.

Cancellation Policy

Refunds for paid tickets for virtual events require 24 hour cancellation notice (24 hour notice before the start time of the event). Paid tickets are fully transferable to public sector colleagues.

For iNetwork members (free tickets), please let us know in plenty of time if you have booked onto the event but cannot attend. Sufficient notice or delegate substitution with a colleague is much appreciated.

All cancellations can be made by emailing karys.thompson@tameside.gov.uk.

What else do I need to know?

The event starts at 10am but the virtual room will be open slightly earlier (for informal networking and testing the platform/connectivity), the event will finish at 12:30pm.

All iNetwork events are CPD certified. Delegates are eligible to request, on registration, a free CPD certificate for attending. Certificates will be sent after the event.

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