Was the Carillion collapse foreseeable? Yes!

When Carillion became insolvent, it seemingly took many by surprise, but was it really a ‘surprise’ ? And importantly, what can we learn from it so that we do not appoint providers for our projects who then become insolvent?

This evening workshop event, held on Wednesday 9 May, was themed around spotting the warning signs, taking practical steps to protect your organisation and project, and dealing with provider insolvency. It provided practical tips, from an amateur investor and a procurement professional, when undertaking financial due diligence of your providers.

This session covered:

What are bankruptcy and insolvency? What the potential effects on your project?
Learning how to identify the warning signs from the perspective of an amateur investor, using publicly available information which can be accessed by any project manager or procurement professional.
Raising the awareness of things that can be done to spot potential failures long before they occur. This could affect many future projects large and small.
Improving performance in public and private procurement programmes, ultimately saving many millions of pounds.
Commonly asked questions in typical industry Pre-Qualification Questionnaires (PQQ).

However there are still many questions:

Does this information go far enough?
Do we understand what the provider’s responses are telling us?
Who reviews the responses?
Are there scenarios where unsuitable providers might still be awarded contracts?
How to validate the strategy in contracting the provider and determine the desired benefits?
Finally, could more be done?

They used break-out sessions to get the attendees involved in considering what information you think would be useful to know about potential providers, and the questions that could or should be asked. The evening culminated in bringing delegates thoughts together, and then working together to identify ‘fit for purpose’ PQQ questions across a range of relevant financial indicators.

The speakers Dr Jon Broome and Philip Reese have very kindly allowed their presented material to be made available for viewing.
The slides on Slideshare are now available in our APM resources area and also embedded below for reference.