The 2024 LGP Annual Conference is ramping up as we start to lock in final speakers and invite our delegates to secure their seat, especially after 2023 bring record attendance.
Before we move to the Annual Conference, having now closed out the 2024 financial year, I do want to publicly recognise some of the key achievements delivered by the LGP team.
In the last 12 months from a strategic perspective, we completed year 1 of our 2023-2026 Corporate Strategic Plan, finalised our forward 3-year Workforce Plan and IT Roadmap, set a new 3-year Business Development Plan, completed external IT Security Review, launched a new Strategic Plan for Local Government Training Academy (RTO).
LGP designed and submitted our first Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) and appointed our indigenous graph designer, commenced our ISO9001 quality management journey, launch our second White Paper on Circular Economy, began the implementation of a Contract Lifecycle Management System (CLMS) for our panel contacts. We ran a series of product information webinars (including our first hybrid webinar for FOGO), refreshed 8 panel contracts and launched the new Bill Payment Services contract for councils.
We kept our staff engagement score above 80%, Bronwyn Challis was appointed to the APAC Public Sector Council for World Commerce & Contracting. Some great achievements from our loyal staff, most notably Emma Murray and Margret Szanto achieving 15 years of service with LGP. We also acknowledge 5 years of service from Mihaela Stancu, Betty Jovic, Tariq Dahleh and Bronwyn Challis.
The 2024 financial is stacked full of great achievements, all of which we are so proud to deliver as a small business. We also launched Release 2, and then more recently Release 3 of our Procurement Capability Grant Program. Release 3 had a phenomenal response, 68 submissions valued at over $1.24m. With only $150,000 to distribute, shortly we will be advising those who have been successful.
The evaluation committee focus on assessing initiatives around degree of council need, likelihood of success, ability to be completed inside a 12mth period, level of council commitment and expected benefit. For who are successful congratulations. For who missed out, with our intentions to keep growing the amount of money we release each time, please keep trying so hopefully one day we can make sure it becomes your turn.
Back to the 2024 Annual Conference, it is all open and we are calling for people to now secure their seat.
Supported by Telstra as this year’s Platinum Sponsor, the theme is ‘Create Ripples, Ride the Wave’. For me this is about how can we as people in the NSW local government sector can start something that we have not seen before, but we know it is needed because it will make a positive difference. When you take a look through the agenda and our speakers, there is clearly an opportunity for us to take away new ideas and motivation to try something new.
Time to get in and reserve your place fast. The special $990 offer concluded on 31 July and sold out quickly. We now have the Early Bird Offer @ $1050 + GST available till 31 Aug. Outside of securing your seat we are already taking award nominations for the 2024 LGP Procurement Awards. It will be very interesting to see who will be our Approved Contractor of the Year, Procurement Project of the Year, New Procurement Professional, and our major award – the Outstanding Procurement Professional of the Year.
Submissions to the awards close on 20 September.
Finally, our upcoming procurement network meetings have us in Sydney, at the Grace Hotel on the 7th of August for our metropolitan Procurement Network Meeting, and the next day (8th August) we have our Engineering Network Meeting. Then we have the Bathurst event on 22 August. We look forward to seeing you there.
Thank you,
Luke Kenny