By Victoria Mirlocca, Manager, Procurement Services, City of Mississauga
I opened my inbox to find seventeen new emails about a procurement process that, apparently, everyone now has an opinion on. There were comments on the evaluation criteria, terms and conditions, timelines and the process itself.
Tuesday, 8:14 a.m.
I opened my inbox to find seventeen new emails about a procurement process that, apparently, everyone now has an opinion on. There were comments on the evaluation criteria, terms and conditions, timelines and the process itself.
The interesting part? Majority of the comments came from people who had never run a procurement process before – not once. Yet somehow, procurement remains one of the few professions where everyone feels qualified to challenge the expert.
Nobody tells the engineer how to engineer. Nobody tells the lawyer how to apply the law. But procurement? Procurement is public property and everyone knows a better way.
Somehow, when things go wrong, everyone looks back at procurement and asks, “Why did this happen?”
Welcome to another day in the life of a procurement professional.
9:42 a.m.
A meeting begins. The objective is simple – we need to discuss a procurement strategy. Within ten minutes, the conversation has shifted from procurement strategy to politics. Not organizational politics, actual political pressures. Councillors want answers, residents want results and the departments want speed. Everyone wants something and procurement sits in the middle.
We are expected to balance fairness, competition, transparency, risk, compliance, accountability, budget constraints, operational pressures, and political realities. All at the same time and often with no additional resources.
What fascinates me is how invisible that balancing act remains. If procurement successfully navigates a difficult file and avoids controversy, nobody notices. That becomes the expectation. If procurement raises concerns, slows down a process, or identifies a risk, suddenly we are seen as obstacles.
The irony is impossible to ignore. People praise accountability until accountability delays what they want.
11:15 a.m.
Someone asks why the process is taking so long. I explain – we have legislation, we have trade agreements, we have policies, we have fairness obligations, we have legal requirements and we have public scrutiny.
The response? “There has to be a faster way.”
Of course there is. There is always a faster way. Ignoring risk is usually very efficient until it isn’t.
Procurement lives in a strange world where success often means preventing something terrible from happening. The challenge is that prevented problems do not get celebrated. Nobody applauds the lawsuit that never occurred. Nobody recognizes the protest that never materialized. Nobody thanks procurement for avoiding a reputational crisis.
The absence of disaster rarely makes headlines. The presence of one does and guess who gets called?
12:47 p.m.
A client informs me they have already spoken to the supplier, and the supplier has reassured them everything will be fine. I pause. The client speaks as though the supplier’s verbal assurance should eliminate months of due diligence, years of procurement experience, hundreds of pages of contractual protection, risk assessments, market analysis and competitive process requirements. All things replaced by a single conversation.
I remind myself to breathe.
Procurement professionals spend years developing expertise in sourcing strategies, market conditions, contract law, risk management, negotiation techniques, supplier performance, trade compliance, and governance.
Yet one supplier conversation can suddenly outweigh that expertise.
It would be funny if it were not so common.
1:23 p.m.
The latest political hot potato arrives. A project needs to move faster and an exception is suggested. The process should perhaps be shortened. Nothing explicit, nothing written in a way that creates direct accountability. Just enough pressure to make everyone uncomfortable.
This is where procurement often stands alone. While others may experience the urgency of a project, procurement experiences the consequences of decisions. Years later, after leadership changes, after priorities shift and after memories fade, the records remain.
The pressure is temporary, but the accountability is permanent and that reality changes how you see every decision.
2:50 p.m.
Another meeting and another discussion about procurement strategy. Another client explaining what procurement should do. I listen carefully. The recommendations are based largely on personal experience, assumptions, and anecdotes. The zoom participants all nod.
I present market data, risk analysis, historical trends, industry evidence and trade obligations. The zoom participants nod less enthusiastically.
Facts often struggle against confidence, especially when confidence arrives before understanding.
One of procurement’s greatest challenges is not a lack of expertise. It is competing with everyone else’s perception of expertise. Every client believes they understand procurement because they have purchased something before.
By that logic, everyone who has visited a hospital is a doctor or everyone who has boarded an airplane is a pilot. Yet procurement remains uniquely vulnerable to this phenomenon.
3:37 p.m.
A senior leader asks a reasonable question. “Why is procurement always involved so early?” and I smile. Because being involved late costs more. Because decisions become harder to reverse. Because leverage decreases. Because risks increase. Because contracts become more difficult to negotiate. Because, because, because….
Procurement is often invited to problems after they have already become problems and people wonder why solutions are difficult. The best procurement work happens before anyone realizes there is an issue.
4:18 p.m.
As the day winds down, I reflect. Procurement may be undervalued because much of our work operates in invisible space. We create fairness that cannot always be seen, we manage risks that never become public, we build competition that benefits taxpayers years later, we negotiate savings that disappear into budgets, and we establish governance that prevents future controversy.
Our achievements often look like nothing happened and in many cases, that is exactly the point. Nothing happened because procurement did its job.
No scandal, no lawsuit, no failed contract, no unfair advantage and no public embarrassment.
Just quiet success. The challenge is that quiet success rarely receives recognition.
5:00 p.m.
Before signing off, I read one final email. Someone has another suggestion about how procurement should be conducted. They are not in procurement. They have never worked in procurement. They have never been accountable for procurement decisions and yet they are certain that their way is the right way.
I laugh. Not because it is amusing but because it is familiar.
Tomorrow there will be another opinion, another pressure, another urgent request and another expert that isn’t in procurement. And procurement professionals across organizations will continue doing what they always do because while everyone may believe they are an expert in procurement, somebody still has to carry the responsibility.
And that somebody is procurement.