Public Procurement Conference 2021

Livia McHauser is an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company’s London office with extensive Operations experience. Livia joined the company in 2015 and her primary focus is on Procurement – both direct and indirect, working with clients across a wide range of industries including automotive, med-tech, pharma and telecoms.

Sorcha is a Partner in, and Leader of, the McKinsey Dublin office. Her work focuses on integrated care and out-of-hospital care, and she leads McKinsey’s work in these areas across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Sorcha’s work on integrated care has included advising on the design and implementation of an approach to deliver integrated services for patients with long-term conditions across a London borough, advising another London district on a strategy to improve care and reduce costs across the system, and supporting a health minister in Spain in designing a regional integrated care strategy. Sorcha led work on an approach to improve access to primary care in the UK that led to significant improvements in patient access and satisfaction and underpins the national approach to addressing GP access. In addition to publishing and presenting on these topics, Sorcha also convenes a global group of leading practitioners to share perspectives on successes and the future of integrated care.

Before joining McKinsey, Sorcha obtained a degree in microbiology and a PhD in molecular microbiology from Trinity College Dublin.

Paul Quinn is the Chief Procurement Officer, with the Office of Government Procurement within the Irish Department of Public Expenditure & Reform (DPER). Paul joined the Civil Service in 2013 as the Government’s Chief Procurement Officer overseeing the Office of Government Procurement, which leads the Procurement Reform Programme across the public sector. Paul previously worked with the largest Irish telecommunications company, Eircom, and was Supply Chain Director there from 2007. Paul had responsibility for a number of group shared services functions within eircom including Procurement, Property, Transport & Logistics, Billing and Accounts Payable. He held other senior management roles in Operations, Change Management, Process & Systems Integration and Commercial.

John Swords was appointed Head of Procurement for the Health Service Executive in 2012. John has 30 years’ successful experience in the Health Service Executive both from Finance and Procurement Directorates. He is now responsible for the strategic operational development and management of all procurement related activity.

John was instrumental in the implementation of a Single National Procurement Model for HSE which has been a key enabler in achieving cost reduction, increased efficiencies and the adoption of streamlined standardised procurement processes to avoid duplication of effort.

Katharina Knapton-Vierlich joined the Commission's Directorate General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs in 2010, and she currently leads the Public Procurement unit. Its mission is to assist public buyers in playing their part in ensuring prosperity and sustainability in a vibrant economy. They support especially sustainable, green, socially responsible and innovation procurement, and are committed to foster SMEs participation in the procurement market.

Before joining the European Commission, Katharina practiced law in Berlin, having started her professional career in academia. She holds law degrees from the Free University of Berlin (Ph.D.) and the University of Cambridge (LL.M.).

Claire Downey is National Executive with Community Resources Network Ireland, an umbrella body representing community based reuse, repair and recycling organisations, funded by the EPA under the National Waste Prevention Programme. In this role, she is responsible for supporting CRNI members and working toward mainstreaming community reuse, repair and recycling through policy and research.

Claire holds a Bachelor of Engineering (first class honours) degree and has over 15 years of experience in the waste and resources sector. She sits on the National Waste Prevention Committee, the National Waste Advisory Group, is Vice President and board member of the RREUSE network Europe, a fellow with the Chartered Institute of Waste Management and board member of Green Foundation Ireland.

Declan McCormack is Programme Manager at the Office of Government Procurement. He has responsibility at Principal Officer level for the Office of Government Procurement’s eInvoicing Ireland programme. The eInvoicing Ireland Programme was established to facilitate and enable public bodies to comply with the requirements of the European eInvoicing Directive (2014/55/EU) and achieve benefits beyond compliance.

Prior to this appointment he held a range of technical and senior management positions in the IT/ eProcurement industry and, as a member of the National Standards Authority (NSAI), has served on the European eProcurement Standardisation task force (CEN/TC434) that was charged with drafting the eInvoicing Standard as referenced by the European eInvoicing Directive (2014/55/EU).

Emma McEvoy is a Ph.D. candidate at Maynooth University, Department of Law. Emma’s research interests revolve around public procurement legislation and the inclusion of social clauses in public contracts. Emma graduated with a BA in Economics, Politics and Law from DCU in 2007 and an MA in Development in 2009.

Emma was employed as a legal research assistant from 2011 to 2013 on the Interreg EU funded “Winning in Tendering” project. Winning in Tendering is strategic research project aimed at transforming the public sector tendering experience of small indigenous suppliers. Emma was responsible for assessing the impact of the EU Public Procurement Remedies Directive on small suppliers selling into the Irish public market. Over the last three years, Emma facilitated a variety of training programmes for public procurers and SMEs.

Emma is a co-author of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce’s “Are tenders on your Radar” report and co-author on a social-enterprise orientated How to Engage in the Public Sector Market guidance document. Emma strives to re-examine the key ideas and assumptions that shape the production of knowledge in this arena.

Dr. John Glen was a Senior Lecturer in Economics and latterly Director of the Centre for Customised Executive Education CCED at Cranfield School of Management in the UK. After 18 years at Cranfield John retired from the School at the end of September 2017 and is now a visiting fellow at Cranfield.

John has worked extensively with the Kuehne and Nagel organisation for the last 10 years. Currently he advises the boards of Kuehne and Nagel UK, Kuehne and Nagel South and Central America, and has worked on a wide range of engagements across Europe with Kuehne and Nagel. John has also advised a number of global organisations including G4S Africa and DP World (Europe).

As of November 1st 2012 John was retained by CIPS (Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply) as their Chief Economist (only economist!) . In that role John is speaking widely to procurement and supply chain practitioners about the impact of Brexit. John is also a member of the Brexit impact group that reports to the National manager of Kuehne and Nagel UK. John appears regularly on BBC radio and television commenting on the UK macro-economy, the UK banking industry and the economics and finance of sport.

John teaches on a number of international MBA programmes in Germany, Belgium, South Africa and the Netherlands and has delivered executive education programmes to a large portfolio of corporate clients including Kuehne and Nagel, Jaguar LandRover, EMC2, Sony, Vodafone, REXAM, Pfizer, BAE Systems, Trust Re, Etisalat, ARI, HSBC and Sony.

Des Armstrong is the Director of the Construction and Procurement Delivery (CPD), within the Department of Finance and Personnel. Des is responsible for developing procurement policy and best practice across the public sector in Northern Ireland. He provides specialist advice to Northern Ireland Government Departments on procurement and construction matters. Des is a member of the Procurement Board for Northern Ireland, Chair of the Construction Industry Forum for Northern Ireland (CIFNI), Chair of the Business and Industry Forum (BIFBI) and acts as Head of Profession for Programme & Project Management for the Northern Ireland Civil Service. Des is a Chartered Engineer; a fellow of the Institute of Civil Engineers; a fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply.

Sharon Smyth has been involved in public procurement since November 2001 and has been the Director of Supplies and Services Division within the Northern Ireland Department of Finance’s Construction and Procurement Delivery (CPD) since June 2013. Her Division looks after a wide and diverse range of contracts for the NI Departments and their sponsored bodies. Each year around 450 contracts are awarded with a total value of up to £500 million.

Most recently Sharon has taken on the role of Commercial Director for the Department of Finance and has been appointed as a member of the reconstituted Procurement Board. Sharon is an advocate for the professionalism of public procurement and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply.

Colin Jess is the Director of Social Enterprise NI, the representative body for the sector. Prior to this he worked in local banking in Belfast for over 30 years. Colin leads on building awareness of the sector across private, public, and educational sectors. Colin is heavily involved in lobbying political parties for their support and has built many relationships with government departments. He is a Council Member of NI Chamber of Commerce.

Ronan is the Finance and Regulation Director and a member of the Executive Committee. He is responsible for all financial and regulatory matters within the organisation. Ronan has previously held commercial and financial roles in various organisations in the UK and Ireland.

Tomas Wilkinson is Audit Director at the Northern Ireland Audit Office. He is responsible for leading financial and value for money audits with particular focus at the moment on the Department for Communities and the Department of Justice. He led the production of the NIAO’s report on Major Capital Projects which was published last year and liaised with the NI Assembly’s public accounts committee in the production of their report later in the year. Tomas trained as a Chartered Accountant with PwC before joining NIAO in July 2001. He has been a Director in NIAO since 2011.