Tag Archives: quinot

APPRRU collaborates on Global Revolutions VII conference

By | | ,
Leave a comment
Attendees at the 2015 Global Revolutions VII conference at the East Midlands Conference Centre, Nottingham.

Attendees at the 2015 Global Revolutions VII conference at the East Midlands Conference Centre, Nottingham.

APPRRU members at Global Revolutions VII (from left) Ama Eyo, Geo Quinot and Sope Williams-Elegbe with Annamaria La Chimia of the PPRG.

APPRRU members at Global Revolutions VII (from left) Ama Eyo, Geo Quinot and Sope Williams-Elegbe with Annamaria La Chimia of the PPRG.

APPRRU once again supported the Public Procurement Research Group of the University of Nottingham in hosting the seventh event in the series of international conferences under the banner of Public Procurement: Global Revolution. This year’s event was held from 15 to 16 June 2015 at the East Midlands Conference Centre at the University of Nottingham in the UK. Apart from acting as chairs of various conference sessions, three APPRRU researchers read papers at the conference.

Sope Williams-Elegbe presented a paper on “Debarment: A Cross-Jurisdictional Evaluation”.

Williams-Elegbe delivering her paper at Global Revolutions VII.

Williams-Elegbe delivering her paper at Global Revolutions VII.

Ama Eyo’s paper was entitled “E-procurement in practice: Reflections on the “SQuID” experience in Wales”.

Geo Quinot presenting at Global Revolutions VII.

Geo Quinot presenting at Global Revolutions VII.

Geo Quinot spoke about “Balancing functionality assessment and policy considerations in complex procurement in Africa”.

Quinot focuses on procurement and innovation at 2015 Procurement Week

By | |
Leave a comment

Prof Geo Quinot, Director of APPRRU, participated again in the Welsh Procurement Week 2015 organised by Bangor University’s Institute for Competition & Procurement Studies (ICPS) from 16 to 20 March 2015. The week-long event included discussion of various aspects of public procurement law, policy and practice and culminated in the National Welsh Procurement Awards 2015.

Prof Geo Quinot addressing Procurement Week 2015

Prof Geo Quinot addressing Procurement Week 2015

Quinot delivered a paper that focused on the link between innovation and procurement. In it he argued that:

“There seems to be strong evidence and subsequent growing consensus that public procurement can be a very significant factor in supporting broad-based innovation and that this is a very promising tool that states have available to support innovation. The sheer volume of public procurement and the possibility to tailor that significant buying power towards innovative outcomes result in a powerful demand-side measure in support of innovation, a mechanism that any economy that is serious about innovation cannot ignore. However, from a regulatory point of view there are numerous questions that will have to be carefully considered in order to calibrate a procurement system to achieve maximum innovation policy objectives. In some respects these are fairly fundamental questions about how we conceptualise the procurement function in law and how we subsequently design the institutional framework within which this function operates.”

Quinot’s presentation can be viewed at this link.

More details on Procurement Week 2015 are available here.

British Academy awards grant for African procurement research capacity building

By | |
Leave a comment

The British Academy has awarded a grant of £74 000 under the Newton Advanced Fellowship Scheme 2014 to Prof Geo Quinot of APPRRU (as applicant) and Prof Sue Arrowsmith of Nottingham (as co-applicant) for a period of two years.

The purpose of the grant is to continue the work started under an earlier British Academy grant that saw the creation of APPRRU as a platform to facilitate research on public procurement law in Africa. The current project will aim to strengthen collaboration between the University of Nottingham’s Public Procurement Research Group (PPRG) and APPRRU. It will also provide information and awareness of issues facing Africa to enable scholars and policy makers from outside Africa to take these into account.

The project programme will involve research resulting in scholarly articles in this field at the end of the two-years as well as teaching-related development, especially at post-graduate level. It will furthermore have important long-term objectives in supporting and developing the capacity of APPRRU to facilitate scholarship in this area in Africa. A key objective is thus to draw on and transfer the expertise of the PPRG in establishing and maintaining a centre of excellence in scholarship in public procurement, involving primary research, research collaboration such as through dedicated internet portals and conferences, teaching (especially at postgraduate level), capacity development beyond the university such as of practitioners and public officials, and direct participation in the development of policy and regulatory instruments in public procurement.

Quinot participates in Amsterdam conference

By | |
Leave a comment

On 19 November 2014 Geo Quinot of APPRRU participated in a conference on The Public Private Divide: Conference on Semi-public Institutions and Public Contracts at the VU University Amsterdam hosted by the Public Contracts: Law & Governance programme of the Kooijmans Institute for Law and Governance. The aim of the conference was to discuss the public-private divide from various points of view with a focus on the position and role of semi-public institutions and of public contracts. Quinot’s paper focused on semi-public institutions and how these hybrid entities can be understood within traditional approaches to private and public law.

The conference culminated in the public defence by Niels Jak of his PhD dissertation entitled Semipublieke instellingen: De juridische positie van instellingen op het snijvlak van overheid en samenleving. In writing this study, Jak visited APPRRU twice to conduct research on the position of semi-public institutions in the South African context.

Speakers at the conference: From left: Proff Frank van Ommeren (VU), Quinot, Chris Jansen (VU), Ulrich Stelkens (University of Administrative Sciences Speyer, Germany) & Mark Freedland (Oxford)

Speakers at the conference: From left: Proff Frank van Ommeren (VU), Quinot, Chris Jansen (VU), Ulrich Stelkens (University of Administrative Sciences Speyer, Germany) & Mark Freedland (Oxford)

APPRRU hosts workshop on procurement law reform in South Africa

By | |
Leave a comment

 

Participants at the APPRRU workshop

Participants at the APPRRU workshop

In September 2014 APPRRU hosted a workshop at National Treasury in Pretoria around procurement law reform in South Africa. Leading legal practitioners in the area of public procurement regulation joined academics from APPRRU and policy-makers from Treasury to discuss current initiatives in drafting a new public procurement regulator statute that can provide the institutional basis for comprehensive reform of the public procurement regulatory regime. Participants discussed a working draft bill prepared in the Office of the Chief Procurement Officer in Treasury as well as the procurement chapter of the draft Treasury Regulations under the Public Finance Management Act. The workshop was a follow-up on the earlier work done by Prof Quinot of APPRRU for Treasury on the legal landscape governing procurement regulation in South Africa.

Participants at the APPRRU workshop

Participants at the APPRRU workshop

Participants at the APPRRU workshop

Participants at the APPRRU workshop