There are two great achievements I want to call out this month.
The first is the fantastic outcomes from our first ever FOGO (Food Organics, Garden Organics) event held for councils last month. Run in a hybrid format, the LGP office welcomed over 25 council staff to join the session in-person, they were joined by 150 online attendees. With new regulations FOGO will be an ongoing focus for councils and their communities. It will remain a space we continue to try and support the value a FOGO strategy can bring to local communities.
The other great achievement is the release of LGP’s second ever Whitepaper. Titled Circular Economy in Procurement – Challenges and Recommendations for NSW Local Governments we are very proud of the work by our Strategic Procurement Solutions Team, and grateful for the support from our Customer Reference Group who contributed to and helped drive the initiative.
We now encourage everyone to download the white paper and take a read through. We hope this whitepaper generates discussion, strategy and action towards adopting and implementing Circular Economy initiatives in our local communities.
We are so proud of what we are delivering under the Procurement Capability Grant Program. Our Grant Program has been designed to remove the barrier of funding for procurement projects and unlock projects previously considered not possible. We just closed Release 3, which has 68 submissions valued at over $1.24m. Unfortunately, we only have $150,000 to distribute. We are now finalising those submissions we would like to approve, and we will be notifying those recipients towards the end of July. Next month we look forward to sharing the projects we will be investing in over the next 12 months.
Our 2024 Annual Conference is rapidly approaching. Our theme is year is ‘Create Ripples Ride the Wave’. With the agenda set and speakers booked, we are ready to commence registrations. We encourage you to avail the special offer which concludes on 31 July 2024. All information around the conference can be found here.
Our 2024 Procurement Awards are now open for submissions. Every year we recognise our LGP Approved Contractor of the Year, Procurement Project of the Year (with sustainability being the key component), New Procurement Professional, and our major award being the Outstanding Procurement Professional. These are the best people in our business, if you know someone who is at the top of their game and should be recognised, please start working on your award submission by clicking here.
Our upcoming procurement network meetings have us in Kiama on 25th of July, then we are in Sydney, at the Grace Hotel on the 7th August for our metropolitan Procurement Network Meeting, and the next day 8th August, we have our Engineering Network Meeting.
We also have our recently launched LGTA Capability Forums, with our next event at Wagga Wagga on 24 July, with other locations planned for Sydney and Coffs Harbour.
We look forward to having you join us.
Thank you,
Luke Kenny