In the construction projects I’ve worked on, the basic procurement procedure for an engineer looking to buy goods or services is this:
* Fill out a material requisition (MR),
* Get it approved by someone on the authority matrix,
* Hand the signed MR to a procurement officer
* The procurement officer gives you a purchase order number (PO#)
* You pass the PO# to vendors or hire companies in exchange for buying materials or hiring machinery etc.
Now it varies between companies and projects, for example, the process may end with you handing the signed MR to the procurement team and they run with the rest. I’ve always preferred to deal with my suppliers direct because then I can develop the relationships, I have a handle on lead times and if the item I’m after is late, I can expedite it. No middle man.
Therefore, when I give a signed MR to the procurement team, I expect them to be able to give me a PO# almost immediately (or within an hour or even two, at worst). Not weeks later or not at all! This has been my biggest gripe with a procurement manager I worked with recently. I would stand there at his desk, holding my signed MR, and he would keep me standing for 10 minutes and still not give me a PO#.
The Procurement Team needs to understand that:
1) I don’t want a computer print out or pdf of the Purchase Order itself. I just want the PO number! If they give me access to the register, I can even get it myself!
2) Supervisors on site generally request materials or hire equipment when it becomes critical. Sure, this is due to a lack of planning on their behalf. However, it is important to recognise that there is a sense of urgency associated with construction that does not cater for slack members of the procurement team. The longer we have to wait for a PO#, the longer it takes to get the equipment that the supervisors need and the more cost it will incur because of all the workers standing around unable to do their job on site. [I recognise this is more a planning issue, but the procurement issue exascerbates the problem]
3) During mobilisation, we need to get bits and pieces from Bunnings or wherever. We either need to have access to a company credit card, or a blanket purchase order (or one with a specified cap, say $1000). Without it, mobilisation could take twice as long.
The best thing this project did was to hire a very competent procurement officer to work on the team – she is amazing. It hasn’t got to the stage where she gives me a PO# before I even request it, but it’s pretty darn close! When you are a young project engineer you are hardly given any credit and are definitely not on the authority matrix to spend any money. The lack of trust combined with incompetent managers costs companies a LOT of money. Why can’t anyone else see this problem???
