Laing O’Rourke were seeking support in upskilling their procurement team via our Procurement learning journey of workshops. The participants ranged from beginner to advanced level of experience and expertise and included for project procurement managers as well as central procurement category managers.
The Supply Chain Sustainability School started out by ensuring the participants undertook the procurement self-assessment of 14 skill/topic areas within procurement as a function and scored themselves ranging from 1 point for minimal knowledge to 5 points for expert level knowledge.
After analysing the scores of the 14 participants (category managers, assistant procurement managers, procurement managers, plant & materials buyers – MEICA, Civils and Operations) and discussing with the executive sponsor from Laing O’Rourke, we jointly ensured the participants attended the workshops that most suited their training needs and requirements.
The workshop topics were; Introduction to Procurement, Value through Plant & Materials Procurement, Value through Subcontract Procurement, Supplier Performance Management, Supplier Relationship Management and Collaboration in Procurement. We used the 5 workshop days to run the workshop sessions and the consultancy days to run the self-assessment, workshop allocation and 1:1 sessions with participants who are new to subcontract procurement and needed to understand the process and the concepts better.
The workshops provided a forum for participants to learn in a way that added to their existing CIPS qualifications and modules, with real life and project examples. The sessions also provided a chance for newcomers to the team and procurement professionals to hear what the senior team members contributed and learn from there. The interactivity of the workshops helped to seal concepts and process steps in the participants minds.
The benefit of these workshop sessions was that it enriched what participants were doing in their day jobs by helping them connect to other project good examples and lessons learned to ensure tools like the due diligence, collaboration and supplier performance management are given more priority.
We have gathered examples of how the delegates have put their learning into practice from the executive sponsor of this project:
a) Upskilling of professional and best practice methods.
b) Contract knowledge of subcontract procurement.
c) Upskilling around supplier relationship management technics.
