2016 in review

Reflecting on 2016….

What a year 2016 has been for STAR Procurement, we’re often too busy to sit and reflect on how far we’ve come, so we’re using this opportunity to look at what we’ve achieved in 2016 and what exciting things will be happening in 2017…..

The STAR Team

STAR would not be where we are without our staff, this year we have welcomed a new Head of Strategic Procurement, Andy White, as well as four new procurement officers: Mike Crook, Robyn Gwilym, Mark McCue and Grace Power.

We also launched our ‘Grow Your Own’ Programme, which meant we also welcomed Emily Taylor and Stephanie Thornton to our team to take on our brand new role of Trainee Procurement Officer; with our admin assistants Tim Kulewa and Mike Halsall being promoted into this new role.

Awards

It is always fantastic to be recognised for our hard work, and this year we have received the following awards:

  • Go award- Procurement Leadership of the Year award- March 2016
  • I-network Awards- Connected Procurement- November 2016

We were also nominated for a number of other awards, details of which are on our awards page

STAR Business Plan & Procurement Strategy

This year STAR launched our first ever STAR Business Plan.  This was a really useful process to go through and has been key in ensuring that as a service we are proactive and delivering value for money.

This year has also been all about delivering to our procurement strategy.  Each of our category areas has real life examples of how we are delivering our strategy and how we are embedding the principles into ‘Business as usual’.

STAR goes online

Shortly after our second birthday STAR launched our website, a great resource for potential suppliers to read about STAR and find out where they can find out about our opportunities. It also has a fantastic resource area for our buyers within the three STAR Councils to find a number of guidance documents and forms. We’ve also gained a lot of interest on our Twitter account; so if you’re not following us- do it now @STARProcurement

Looking forward to 2017….

In 2017, we will turn three years old, we will be launching our Quality Management System (QMS) to help us further our commitment to continuous improvement. We're also nominated for the Local Government Chronicle awards which take place in March 2017.

Last but not least, we look forward to welcoming our new Director of Procurement; Lorraine Cox- we’ll be sharing more information about Lorraine when she starts in January.

Posted on Thursday 22nd December 2016