Editor’s note: there was so much news emanating from the procurement and supply management world this month that we decided to run two editions of Chief Procurement Officer News. Enjoy!
Rutgers University Students Win Top Prize at ISM Competition
In late December, three undergraduate students from Rutgers University – Dwight Gonzales, Sheryll Moser, and Alexandra Preziosi – won the Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) annual indirect procurement case competition that was held in Phoenix. According to a story by Digital Journal, this is the second time in five years that students from Rutgers won this award. The three students, who are studying supply chain management at Rutgers’ Business School had to, as a condition of receiving scholarships from ISM last year, analyze GlaxoSmithKline’s spending on contracted legal services and how the company could reduce legal costs.
To do so, Gonzalez, Moser, and Preziosi applied analyses they learned at Rutgers, including Six Sigma principles, as well as their own novel approach to recommend ways that GSK could reduce spending on legal services. Of special note here is that the students didn’t know each other prior to working on the project, and each brought strengths to the team to round out each other’s weaknesses. For example, one student has stronger analytic and writing skills than presentation skills, but her teammates worked with her to bring her presentation skills up to par so that the team could present as a unified front to win the competition.
Second VA Procurement Official Investigated by IG for Improperly Awarding Contracts
In early December, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report in which it concluded that Iris Cooper, the former Executive Director for Acquisition Operations, improperly steered contracts to Ohio-based Tridec Technologies, LLC, with which she had conflicts of interest. According to the report, Cooper and an accomplice, Wendy McCutcheon, who at the time was the associate director in the VA’s office of acquisition operations, pre-selected Tridec as the winner of a contract to build the VA’s “Virtual Office Acquisition” program. Together, they broke down the $15 million contract with Tridec into contracts below the $5 million threshold that would have required them to compete with other vendors.
The OIG began investigating Cooper and McCutcheon after receiving multiple complaints to its tip line. The report also notes that they were less than candid during the OIG’s investigation. However, since Cooper and McCutcheon left the VA before the OIG concluded its report, it was unable to recommend legal or disciplinary action against them. Cooper left the VA to take a senior executive procurement position at the U.S. Department of Treasury. According to a story by the Washington Times, Treasury officials will not seek to terminate her based on the VA OIG’s findings, but it will investigate why she was hired while she was under investigation for wrongdoing at another federal agency.
Cooper is the second senior VA procurement official to be investigated by the OIG. Readers may recall that the OIG also investigated Susan Taylor, former Deputy Chief Procurement Officer at the VA, who was allowed to retire from federal service with full benefits.
Corporate United Names Doug Blossey as President and Chief Operating Officer
On January 15, Cleveland, Ohio-based group purchasing organization, Corporate United, announced that it has named, “friend of the site,” Doug Blossey as its new president and chief operating officer. He will lead an expanded management team at Corporate United, which has come off of a record year for revenues and buying power. Blossey was formerly the Chief Procurement Officer and a Senior Vice President of Procurement Strategy, Risk and Operations at Key Bank. Prior to that, he worked for National City Bank and for nearly nine years at Ariba, holding account executive, consulting, and senior product management roles. Blossey got his start at Accenture where he spent almost a decade, rising to the senior manager level. He received his Bachelor of Science in Finance from Miami University.
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