The Challenge: Procurements here take too long. Drafts of scope of work travel from person to person over email, but often slow to a crawl. Every time there is a change to the solicitation, everybody in the chain of approval has to sign off again. Our reviewing attorneys are sometimes overwhelmed by the volume and complexity of our procurements, especially our IT RFPs. We are motivated to meet the national procurement acquisition lead times (PALT), but collectively we drag our feet and rarely do.
What Good Looks Like: Our procurement actions, on average, are within the PALT goals in the small, large, and supplies acquisition categories (https://ibc.doi.gov/acquisition/partner-with-us/acquisition-dates-timelines/palt).
The Approach: A combined ReEngine and employee project team wrote the project’s charter defining what good looked like for procurement. They mapped the steps of the procurement process, capturing good ideas, problem areas, and possible solutions along the way. ReEngine analyzed the procurement data and presented a gap analysis to the team. Time spent at each step in the process was measured and assessed. Opportunities to streamline the work with checklists, routing guidance, decision templates, and examples of successful RFPs helped to establish standard work. ReEngine designed a Journey Board that made the flow of work visible and manageable. Contingencies for difficult, but frequently encountered, situations were established. The key constraint (i.e. consensus on the scope’s narrative) was identified, measured, strengthened, and managed. The team established a quality feedback loop from RFP results to continuous process improvement. Solution-ideas contributed by staff and ReEngine were woven into an efficient and effective reengineered business process.
The Results: Multiple successful projects in procurement departments of state agencies, cities, and higher education. Procurement teams were able to accomplish more with less effort. In one engagement, the procurement department reduced the average time to procure IT software from 462 days to 240 days. Client testimonial: “We identified the root causes of delay and worked to reduce them with the ReEngine-designed Journey Board which has been a tremendous success.” One agency went from doing 4 competitively procured grants a year (averaging 316 days) to accomplishing 12 grants/yr. (averaging 248 days).
The Team: Alfredo Mycue, the Director of Strategy at ReEngine, facilitated the engagement and mapped and reengineered the procurement process with David Johnson, ReEngine’s Chief Operating Officer. The whole combined project team conducted an interference diagram activity which developed viable solutions. The procurement department adopted the process changes and began using a Journey Board, which enabled teamwork and tore down traditional silos.
