WEDNESDAY, JULY 13, 2011

9:00 Opening Remarks from the Course Leaders

Paul Emanuelli
General Counsel & Managing Director, The Procurement Office

Judy L. Wilson
Partner, Blake Cassels & Graydon LLP

MODULE 1 DefiningThe Parameters Of Your Sandbox

9:30 Focussed Supply Market Analysis to Improve Value for Money

Kurt Ritcey
Partner, Deloitte & Touche LLP

Conducting supply market analysis at the outset of your projects is crucial to developing effective procurement strategies and to better managing supply-related risks. In this session, you will gain the skills necessary to demonstrate high-level business acumen to potential suppliers and get the best value from all your deals.

• Checklist for creating and implementing a formalized system to track and rate suppliers
• Optimizing proven techniques to rate performance
• Developing knowledge of market economics and drivers to deliver cost, value and improved risk management
  • What factors can influence and impact supply?
  • How is bargaining power affected?
  • Conducting assessments of past, current and future market trends to re-align business practices
• Identifying and evaluating Key Performance Indicators beyond traditional financial metrics, including customer satisfaction indices such as:
  • On-time deliveries
  • Supplier defect rate
  • Procurement cycle time
• Maximizing online resources to assist in comparing scores and obtaining feedback from your peers

Case Study: Foundational Principles in Supply Market Analyses

The session leaders will guide you through the building block principles that form part of every good market research project. You will learn the hallmarks of a good organizational structure and how it can lead to a clear competitive advantage.

11:00 Networking Refreshment Break

11:15 Balancing Overlapping Requirements under Multiple Key Trade Agreements, and Managing Obligations under the Broader Public Sector Expense Directive

Brenda C. Swick
Partner, McCarthy Tétrault LLP

Rosslyn Young
Legal Counsel, The Procurement Office

• Key new developments under NAFTA, IAT, WTO and inter-provincial agreements
• Managing the overlapping requirements and inconsistencies between the trade agreements
• Overview of the underlying principles of the BPS Expenses Directive, particularly for hospitals and educational institutions, including:
  • Which organizations are covered?
  • What amounts are included in calculating the value of public funds received?
  • Exercise: Creating a structure to address all 8 requirements that each designated BPS organization must include into its expense rules.

12:15 Networking Luncheon for Delegates and Speakers

MODULE 2 Drafting Exercises: Practical Skills Training to Get it Right the First Time

1:30 Writing with Clarity: Plain Language Drafting Skills for RFXs

Paul Emanuelli
General Counsel and Managing Director
The Procurement Office

• What are your obligations under the plain language drafting requirements , and the legal implications for failure to comply?
• Knowing your target audience: Strategies to tailor your writing to suit the ability and knowledge level of the reader
• Critically analyzing the technicalities of writing, including:
  • Overview of the fundamentals of drafting
  • Grammatical structures to avoid
  • Factors to consider in creating a blueprint for documents that facilitate full comprehension of the contents
• Key Words and Grammatical Structures for Convincing and Easy to Read RFX Text

2:30 Developing, Drafting and Amending Solid Procurement Documents to Refresh Your Template Bank

Toronto

Leo Gotlieb, FCMC
Director, Western Management Consultants

Eddy Jin
Director of Procurement, University of Toronto

Peter Vasilopoulos
Procurement Manager, Toronto Zoo

The legal and financial risks inherent in ignoring changes in the law and having non-compliant documents are too high. In this session, you will gain practical drafting strategies to bolster your drafting skills to prepare key procurement documentation and minimize the serious operational, financial, legal, contractual and reputational risks of weak documentation.

• Specifications: Establishing a clear and comprehensive scope to the procurement process will enable you to obtain goods or services at the most economical cost and to invite maximum competition.
• Statements of Work: SOW’s are inherently complex and are unique to each contract. They can vary significantly depending on the type of work required, the duration and other significant factors, but there are few clear rules or standards to define the parameters of a good SOW. In this exercise, you will review solid SOWs and learn how to incorporate them into your procurement projects.
• Case Study: The competitive procurement cycle for a unique purchase can be facilitated by a negotiable competitive document. User centric guides facilitate the alignment of client needs to the overall procurement document. A step by- step walk through of this approach will highlight the flexibility of this process.
• Addenda covering Clarifications and other changes: Work through the various methods of making changes to your procurement documents in this session. You will gain clarity on the format and content of addenda and other changes to procurement documents, in order to avoid unnecessary delays.
• Non-Legally Binding RFPs:
  • Refresher on the key document characteristics
  • Determining the limits of mandatory requirements: What contractual information should not be included and where do you have flexibility?
  • How to evaluate on top and how to allocate points while managing the hurdles of subjectivity

Networking Refreshment Break will be provided at 3:30.

4:45 Procurement Best Practices: 2011 and Beyond

Duncan C. Card
Partner, Bennett Jones LLP

• Strategic planning: The corporate governance duties of procurement managers
• Contract formulation trends: Consolidating states T&C’s into bidders’ best of breed contracts
• Emergence of competitive dialogue: Securing the benefits without the risks or pitfalls
• Multi-track selection and negotiations: Increasing the heat of competitive bidding
• The return of the pendulum: Documented due diligence and sole sourcing

5:30 Course Leaders’ Closing Remarks Conference Adjourns for the Day

THURSDAY, JULY 14, 2011

9:00 Opening Remarks from the Instructors

9:15 Deconstructing Non-Compliant Exclusion Clauses and Implementing Effective Solutions to Reduce the Risk of Litigation

Paul D. Blundy
Partner, Bennett Jones LLP

The language of your exclusion clauses directly impacts your risk of legal claims arising out of breach of a bid contract or duty owed to tenderers . In order to minimize and properly manage that risk. In this session, you will learn how to shore up your best defence and insulate your documents against the risk of a Tercon-style judgment.

• Specific wording that must be included in exclusion clauses
• Key considerations in drafting exclusion clauses and others, including:
  • Limitation of Liability, Privilege and Indemnity Clauses
• Overcoming common traps and pitfalls in boilerplate language: When can templates be effective, and how far will they take you?
• Future trends: Examining the permissibility of building a specific exclusion clause into the tender process applicable to suppliers with poor past performance ratings
• Drafting Exercise: Legally Binding Exclusion Clauses: In this breakout exercise, you will learn how to effectively and efficiently identify the characteristics of a compliant exclusion clause and how to break bad drafting habits.

10:45 Clarifying the Differences between Tenders and Binding or Non-Binding RFPs: How to Avoid Creating a Tender

Judy L. Wilson
Partner, Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP

Careful drafting is important in formulating RFPs in order to avoid crossing over into Tenders. The essential elements of both types of document must be at the forefront when drafting, and particularly when reviewing multiple bids for the same RFP. When making changes to your RFP, it is extremely easy to indirectly create a tender, thereby triggering your obligations of fairness and other tendering rules. This drafting exercise will teach you how to keep the two documents distinct and separate to preserve the integrity of your RFP and mitigate the risk of exposure to Contract A analysis.

11:15 Networking Refreshment Break

MODULE 3 Evaluating Bids: Playing within the Sandbox that you Have Created

11:30 Best Practices Guide on Procurement Bid Evaluation

Denis Chamberland
Partner, Baker & McKenzie LLP

Joe Marotta
Assistant Procurement Manager
Rapid Transit Project Implementation, Metrolinx

The evaluation process is key to ensuring that you have selected the right company for the job. This session will define the parameters for seamless evaluation, and allow you to make better business decisions with a view to protecting your company. Learn when and how to make changes to your process.

• Establishing a viable evaluation framework: Case Study
  • Timely management of all the players in a multi-stake holder environment
  • Meeting the needs of private sector clients while respecting and protecting the principles of fairness, transparency and accountability
• Creating criteria that is clear and fair to bidders
• Practical evaluation strategies to manage subjectivity while forging ahead with industry-wide standardization
• Best practices in quantification

12:30 Course Leaders’ Closing Remarks: Conference Concludes

12:45 Networking Luncheon for Delegates and Speakers Participating in the Master Class

Post-Course Master Class Assignment: Constructing and Implementing a Contract Management System and Quality RFP Drafting Procedures

July 14, 2011 | 2:00 – 5:00 pm

Master Class Instructor
Ashif Mawji
CEO, Upside Software Inc.

This is your opportunity to immediately put into practice the new skills learned throughout the course in a mock procurement exercise. The Master Class instructor will first guide you through the steps required to create and implement a successful contract management structure. You will then focus on ensuring that your RFPs are properly executed to fit within your newly established structure. You will leave this Class with the skills and confidence to master your very next RFP, and firm up best practices for all future procurement projects.

Instituting an Effective and Comprehensive Contract Management Structure

• Evaluating your unique workplace requirements
• Examining leading systems that excel in storing templates, tracking compliance with, and performance against, contracts and providing reminders for time sensitive matters
• Developing a shopping checklist to secure the best possible system to meet your needs

Drafting a Clear and Concise RFP that fits under your new Contract Management Structure

• Extracting the key information that you need from potentially overwhelming market analysis research
• Guidelines to incorporate the necessary clauses into the overall flow of your document, and keeping the focus on compliance, particularly for exclusion clauses