Denver is one of the United States’ most spectacular cities.
As the largest city in Colorado, it is located at the base of the Colorado Rocky Mountains and is home to picturesque views and warm weather for a good part of the year.
Lance Jay heads up procurement at the City and County of Denver. According to Jay, his procurement function touches most entities within the municipality which leaves little time for boredom. “From arts and venues to parks and recreation to Denver International Airport and street maintenance and everything in between, the role is certainly varied,” he explains. “We’re buying everything from airplane de-icer to road paint to golf course fertiliser; no one day is the same for us. We are constantly dealing with something new and we’re buying everything and anything.”
Scaling efficiency
It is fair to say procurement has been given a tough hand in recent times. Ultimately, standing still hasn’t been an option. The past few years have been dominated by external problems such as COVID-19, wars and inflation among other black swan events. It has meant that the importance of having a finger on the pulse of the latest problems is key to long-term success, something Jay is well aware of.
“Part of our mission and vision is being agile and efficient,” explains Jay. “And if you look at the last four or five years, things like working from home and having virtual meetings, really didn’t exist before. For us, it was going from in-person bid openings to doing virtual bid openings which was challenging at first. In the past 12 to 14 months, the use of AI has also increased and is being incorporated into a lot of different things.
“We have many vendors now using AI to submit their bids. We need to look at the bids and see if they were AI-generated versus the vendor doing the work. So, a lot of those old school procurement things are still valid, but we have to pivot a little bit and shift how we do things to be either more technology savvy with AI or be able to incorporate it into the business. Because things are now moving at such a fast pace, if you aren’t agile, you’re going to get left behind.”
For Jay, he values being open to alternative ways of working and not keeping operations the same because that is what is safe. He explains that within the City and County of Denver, the organisation is continuously searching for new ways to harness efficiency.
Change management
“You have to be nimble and willing to change,” says Jay. “We’re constantly looking at how vendors are reacting to some of the things we’re using, be it some type of punch-out portal that they’re able to log into or a more digital ordering system. It’s no longer taking a pen and paper to take inventory; it may be using barcodes, scanning, or doing more of the computerised inventory. This is where the City and County of Denver are leaning on partners like Safeware.
“This relationship sees the organisation able to leverage a more just-in-time ordering process with vendors and allows for some products to be housed. It means we’re able to stay up with the newest products or the newest technology of how we deal with some of the operations because the operations are constantly changing,” adds Jay. “For example, if you look at parks and recreation and how they check people in, it previously was a punch card system. Now things are done with your phone and digital cards versus the old school punch cards that you used to have from years gone by…”
