Global Procurement Initiative
Credit: Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash
Project Client: United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA)
Project Dates: 09/02/2014–09/28/2019
Project Location(s): Worldwide (U.S., Botswana, Brazil, Ethiopia, Honduras, India, Japan, Jordan, Mexico, Morocco, Panama, Romania, Vietnam, and others)
Project Description:
The Global Procurement Initiative: Understanding Best Value (GPI) was designed to help public officials in emerging economies better understand the total cost of ownership for the purchase of goods and services related to infrastructure projects. Under the GPI, USTDA shared best practices for establishing procurement systems that integrate lifecycle cost analysis (LCCA) and best‐value determination in a fair and transparent manner to promote sustainable investments and level the playing field for greater competition in public tenders.
Value‐based procurement practices and policies encourage the procurement of high‐quality and innovative solutions, which create efficient markets and produce better economic development outcomes. The use of objective methods for value assessment improves governments’ capacity to make more transparent, value‐based procurement decisions, leading to smarter, longer‐term investments with overall cost savings.
Under this scope, GPTech trained procurement professionals on the importance of acquisition planning and understanding the whole-life costs of their investments; specifically, how to design technical specifications, conduct LCCA, and develop objective evaluation criteria to transparently and fairly assess value in large-scale infrastructure tenders. This project addressed the energy, transportation, and environmental technical areas.
Goals & Achievements:
GPTech delivered over 28 workshops to more than 1,000 procurement professionals representing a wide array of ministries, utilities, and state-owned enterprises. GPTech trained procurement officials from Botswana, Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Mexico, Myanmar, Panama, Philippines, Romania, Turkey, and Vietnam. GPTech provided training for procurement professionals in GPI partner countries, addressing LCCA, total cost of ownership, and best-value procurement techniques; led partner-country officials through a change-management process focused on transitioning to a more sophisticated procurement approach; and advised the Millennium Challenge Corporation on incorporating value-based criteria and LCCA into its procurement processes.
