Monthly Archives: July 2012

Product Recalls- The choice of a lady? In the Brian Farrington Limited work with retailers, we are aware of the negative impact a product recall programme can have, as well as the associated cost. The trading Standards Institute publish on a regular basis product recalls. They relate to a wide variety. One of the latest […]

The Technical considerations of a purchase – raw cotton. Brian Farrington Ltd has assisted a client who had a dispute over the purchase of raw cotton. That specific dispute was in regard to invoiced weight. We should bear in mind that many ‘items’ are purchased by weight, including fruit, castings, steel and coal. Specialist technical  […]

Elite Athletes! What about the elite criminals in our midst! There are elite criminals in our midst. That is a fact, but are there any in procurement? There have been some well publicised cases, including the recent ‘potato’ scandal. It is a reasonable question to ask “How does an elite criminal operate in procurement?” Even […]

Today’s risk briefing is prompted by a report on a Performance Audit of San Bernadino International Airport Operations, Development and Construction Activities. The report is dated June 6, 2011. It highlights what can happen in the absence of robust due diligence and lack of robust financial controls. The report concludes that SBIAA has not established […]

Today’s risk is prompted by an articles ‘BBC saves money by giving staff a chauffeur – driven car’, see Sunday Mail 22nd July 2012. It reported, ‘The BBC is spending an estimated £130,000 over two years on a chauffeur-driven car rejected by its chairman Lord Patten because it would ‘incur costs’ to terminate the contract’. […]

  We are one of the world’s longest established consultants with particular strengths in Procurement Risk Management. The ‘How does procurement contribute to the Corporate Risk Register’ survey is a good and useful piece of work, and the research phase is launched here. With procurement risk high on the agenda (groan – not another desperate attempt […]

The most extreme example of not knowing who is on a site occurred  at a client organisation. Two men arrived at a reception. They were dressed in white coats and told the receptionist they had come to take away the computers for repair. Unbelievably they were given unchallenged access! They took away the computers – […]