A procurement department can have the best policies on paper and still under-perform if its managers lack the leadership skills to align people, decisions and results. This course looks at public procurement management through a leadership lens: how strong procurement managers build teams, avoid common mistakes, and make decisions under pressure — not just how the rules are written.

Participants also work through the legal and contractual side of the role, from drafting specifications and legal memos to negotiation and dispute resolution, so they leave equipped to both lead a procurement function and defend its decisions when challenged.

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Understand the role of public procurement staff and the issues behind common procurement problems.
• Recognise the skills required of public procurement staff.
• Solve problems by identifying, analysing and making decisions on them.
• Manage procurement risk, weighing strategic against operational risk.
• Use an organisational performance-management system to track results and drive success.
• Assess leadership behaviours and development needs, and plan for leadership succession.

This course is designed for:

• Board members, senior executives, and key staff in system management.
• Directors and policymakers in human resources and capital management.
• Board members and training and development managers in system management.
• Board members, strategic planners, and contract managers.

Module 1: The Procurement Manager's Role and Challenges

• Role identification — ten attributes of effective public procurement management.
• Purchase-cycle management, and avoiding common mistakes in procurement management.
• Identifying challenges facing purchasing managers, and a model for problem-solving.
• Solving problems using facts, logic and hypotheses.
• Developing and publishing decision-making criteria, and a decision matrix for alternative solutions.

Module 2: Team, Capacity and Organisational Focus

• Focus on organisational capacity: human capacity, skills, behaviours and motivational attitudes.
• Team building — cooperation and consensus; setting and implementing smart targets.
• Recurring procurement problems and challenges, and common public-procurement mistakes.
• Preventive measures: avoiding violations caused by procurement mistakes.

Module 3: Managing Procurement Risk

• Unified procurement projects — their causes and forms.
• Steps followed in managing procurement risk.
• Identifying and managing strategic risk, and identifying and managing operational risk.
• Development, credit and reputational procurement risks, and steps to reduce them.

Module 4: Performance, Accountability and Leadership Development

• Understanding and reaching strategic focus, and key result areas and metrics.
• Goals and objectives linked to organisational strategies.
• Tracking, monitoring and addressing areas for development, and communicating results.
• Assessing leadership behaviours and leadership-development needs.
• Basic competency planning — management skills and tasks — and measuring managerial performance.
• Responsibility and accountability, and planning for leadership succession.

Module 5: Contracts and Legal Drafting Skills

• The concepts of legal management, and how legal provisions are defined and interpreted.
• Writing and analysing contract specifications and procurement processes.
• The legal importance of contractual specifications in relation to tender invitations.
• Skills and methods of legal drafting, contract preparation and dispute resolution.

Delivery formats:

• In-house training.
• One-to-one training.
• Group training.
• Hands-on practical training.

We can deliver this course at the time and place that suits you. For more information, please contact the Arab British Fellowship Training Academy team.