CIPS awards

An innovative project I've been working on since 2007 for the London Fire Brigade and Emergency Planning Authority and Capital Ambition (aka the 32 London councils) was recently nominated for a prestigious CIPS award.    Naturally, the taxpayer can't be expected to fund our attendance at "lavish champagne-sipping" awards dinners at "expensive Mayfair hotels", but by an incredible stroke of Cinderella-like luck a CIPS fairy godmother arranged for us to be invited to last night's ceremony as the guests of key sponsors Bravo Solutions.   The Bravo guys there on the night clearly couldn't work out who we were or why we had been invited but proved most jovial and generous hosts - both at the ceremony and later at their Cuckoo Club after party.

Christine Morton (Capital Ambition)

Other people (such as the eminent Peter Smith) have blogged elsewhere about the winners and losers   - suffice to say we were beaten to the title of Best Supplier Relationship project by Premier Foods/British Sugar who went on to take the overall prize - but it was clear we'd done very well to be the only public sector project to win a nomination in our category.  In fact, there were surprisingly few public sector projects nominated in any open category:  it will be interesting to see if that's still the case next year, when spending cuts will have forced previously change-resistant public sector organisations to become much more radical in  their approach to procurement.

Having said that, it was inspiring to meet a nominee in the public sector category, Mike Melville, programme manager of xchangeWales, who has achieved millions of pounds of savings by moving all 22 local authorities of Wales onto e-procurement and more closely integrated purchasing  - and who frankly deserved to have won his category hands down (judges, are you listening?)    Mike proved his determination and stamina  is not just confined to driving through procurement change, outlasting virtually every other Bravo client and guest at the after party....

Mike Melville

  
Rory Bremner had the dubious honour of hosting the awards. He did a good job keeping things moving, but it was interesting to notice that his act is getting quite dated: he produced excellent Michael Howard, Ken Clark, Blunkett, Hague, Blair, Prescott and Bush - and had a good shot at Vince Cable - but he isn't doing Cameron, Clegg,  or any of the Milibonks or Eds.   As a 40 something ex-public-schoolboy himself - is he just too similiar to Cameron and Clegg to be able to do a decent impression of them?

Rory Bremner - can't remember who he was doing at this point!

Gavin White, Business process lead at Pfizer