LGP News CEO Item – November 2025
LGP is fresh off the back of another successful Annual Conference where we were joined by over 250 council staff. suppliers and delegates. Our theme was Future Focused: 2026 and Beyond, which proved to be a great insight into what is ahead for the procurement profession in local government across NSW.
We covered topics such as artificial intelligence and procurement, how the geopolitical landscape can impact supply chains for councils and local communities, and the real threat of cybersecurity weakness in our 3rd and 4th tier supplier market.
Gordon Donovan from SAP shared their latest research in conjunction with The Economist Magazine, which tells us a lot about the mega trends facing procurement in the next 5-10years. We were grateful to have the CEO of Supply Nation, Kate Russell join us to endorse the new LGP First Nations Procurement Scheme, and reiterated the importance of engaging with First Nations businesses in procurement and the impact it can have on communities.
Most significantly, we had the great benefit of listening to a series of council case studies, where we got to showcase excellent procurement practice delivering important outcomes for communities. These case studies allow delegates to consider what might be possible for their council function going forward.
It was great to once again be able to recognise our award winners where again we get to acknowledge procurement excellence in the sector.
2025 Outstanding Procurement Professional of the Year Award winner is Raj Khanal from Burwood Council.
2025 Procurement Project of the Year was awarded to Lismore City Council ‘Flood Restoration Portfolio Procurement Framework’.
2025 New Procurement Professional of the Year Award winner is Natalie Josephson from Inner West Council.
2025 LGP Approved Contractor of the Year Award winner is Origin Energy.
As is now our tradition we took the opportunity to publicly recognise two of our staff members for their loyalty and service to LGP. Victoria Yang celebrated five years with our organisation. It was wonderful to be able to recognise Suska Timney for her 15 years of service to our organisation. We truly appreciate what these two deliver for us, and all of what the LGP team does for our organisation, we are very grateful.
We sincerely thank all our sponsors supporting the 2025 Annual Conference, especially Telstra as our Platinum Sponsor, Blackwoods as our Gold Sponsors, and then Stabilcorp and ‘COS as our Silver Sponsors.
As we now move away from our annual conference and start to plan for 2026, we continue our work at LGP in relation to supporting digital transformation in local government. The New Innovation Development Fund has now closed and we commencing evaluation of all digital transformation submissions, to which we were overwhelmed by the volume of interest we look forward to sharing the outcomes as to some of what we read.
We will continue our drive under the First Nations Procurement Scheme, shifting our attention from recruiting First Nations businesses to the vendor panel platform. Instead working with NSW councils to start including these organisations in low to medium spend opportunities which they are putting to market below the tender threshold.
Our new Disaster Response Solution is gaining momentum with a series of councils who are keen to assess their current plea pre planning strategies in relation to how respond to a disaster. We have another 10 councils identified as communities who may benefit from what we have created with a three contingent supply chain model to respond anywhere at any time.
Thank you.