The challenge
Processes protect people and organisations when they are not followed, trust is destroyed, conflicts can emerge and your teams and organisation may be at risk.
What do you do when you realise your people have failed to comply? We work with you to investigate, uncovering what’s really happening and why; and make recommendations to mitigate reoccurrence. Together, we address the issues to help you rebuild transparency and trust. Our client, a local Council, received a complaint regarding the procurement activities of one of its business units. These included the engagement of vendors without appropriate approvals, high-value work undertaken without contracts and undeclared or unmanaged conflicts of interest.
They called on OCM to investigate. We uncovered widespread non-compliance with Council’s Procurement Policy and related procedures, with practices and behaviours entrenched over several years. Council staff cited high workloads and tight turnaround times as contributing factors, but the evidence we uncovered indicated the real cause was a lack of meaningful planning and managerial oversight.
How we helped
Our report detailed the extent of the poor conduct, the impact of this and the consequences.
Council was comforted by the rigorous approach we took; informed by detailed analysis of contracts, data, invoices, policies and procedures and internal and external stakeholder interviews.
Results that matter
Council was able to take the first steps to regaining the trust and confidence of its stakeholders. Our comprehensive report gave it the comfort to assure them that it had identified the extent of the non-compliance, the individuals responsible and taken action to address the root causes.
The people in Council are well-informed on relevant policies and procedures, with and increased focus on managerial oversight, significantly lessening the risk of non-compliance.
