By Katie Walton, Purchasing Agent, City of Barrie
As procurement professionals, we are often responsible for a procurement from start to finish, from identifying the needs of the department and running the solicitation to monitoring performance once the contract is awarded. When multiple procurements and competing stakeholder deadlines are added to the mix, it is easy for deadlines to be missed and work to slip through the cracks.
Most procurement professionals don’t think of themselves as project managers, yet every procurement has a scope, budget, timeline, stakeholders and desired outcome. In many ways, the two disciplines are closely intertwined.
Looking at procurement through a project management lens gives buyers a practical framework for staying organized, managing risks, and delivering better outcomes. It also helps answer a common challenge in procurement: how do you keep multiple moving pieces on track when so much depends on other people?
At its core, project management provides a structured approach for coordinating people, processes, and timelines toward a common objective. These are the same challenges that procurement professionals face every day.
According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), the five phases of a project are:
Initiation → Planning → Execution → Controlling → Closing
Procurement follows a very similar lifecycle even if the terminology is different. In both disciplines, success depends on investing the time upfront to properly define requirements, plan activities and assign tasks with stakeholders. By applying a project management mindset, buyers can better manage timelines, communicate more effectively, plan for risks, and maintain control of competing priorities.
Initiation Phase
Before work begins, a project manager takes time to understand the problem they need to solve and define what success looks like. They start by asking a few basic questions: What is the problem? Who are the stakeholders and who is responsible for key decisions? What outcome are we trying to achieve?
In procurement, initiation often begins with a completed requisition form. But if that form is treated as a box-checking exercise instead of an opportunity to understand the requirement, issues can surface later in the process. Before beginning work on the bid document, meet with the requesting department and confirm:
- What is the business need, and what is the department trying to achieve?
- Who are the key stakeholders, and how will they be involved: writing specifications, reviewing bid documents, sitting on the evaluation committee?
- What is the budget, and are the appropriate approvals in place?
- What defines success for this procurement: on-budget, on-time, or a specific operational outcome?
Many issues can be traced back to assumptions made during initiation, and a few additional conversations upfront can prevent weeks of rework later.
This stage is often rushed because everyone wants to get to drafting and posting. Getting stakeholders aligned early helps establish expectations, clarify responsibilities, and reduce confusion once the procurement is underway. This also creates accountability that carries through the rest of the process.
Planning Phase
Effective planning is critical to project success. Even the most capable team will struggle to deliver a project efficiently when objectives, scope, resources, and timelines have not been clearly established. A project manager develops a detailed understanding of the scope, assigns responsibilities, and builds a realistic timeline for delivery.
Procurement professionals play a similar role in the purchasing process. They work with departments to develop a clear and defensible scope of work, ensure compliance with trade agreements and other requirements, and determine the procurement method best suited to the risk, complexity, and value of the purchase.
Where an evaluation is required, the criteria and weighting need to be objective, measurable, and defensible. This is particularly important given the potential for vendor debrief requests, bid disputes, and procurement challenges.
Project managers often use risk registers to identify potential issues and document mitigation strategies before problems arise. Buyers can benefit from taking a similar approach by identifying potential procurement risks early, such as:
- Is there limited competition?
- Is the budget realistic and aligned with current market conditions?
- Are the deliverables, specifications, and performance requirements clearly defined?
- Are there market conditions, lead times, or procurement requirements likely to affect supplier participation or delivery?
Finally, project managers break work into a detailed schedule with clear owners and deadlines. Buyers can do the same by mapping out key activities and responsibilities.
Each task should have a clearly assigned owner and due date. Build in holidays, vacations, and other known absences that could affect timing, and obtain stakeholder agreement on the schedule before the procurement begins.
A shared, milestone-based schedule keeps all parties accountable and helps identify bottlenecks early, reducing the risk of surprises and delays later in the process. Taking the time to thoroughly research the procurement, select the appropriate procurement method, and identify potential risks during the planning stage helps ensure the procurement process runs more efficiently and successfully.
Execution Phase
During execution, a project manager adopts a forward-looking mindset, shifting from planning to actively managing progress. They continuously monitor what is happening today, anticipate what could impact tomorrow, and take action to keep the project moving toward its objectives. Rather than waiting for issues to arise, they focus on identifying dependencies, removing roadblocks, coordinating stakeholders, and ensuring the project remains on track for scope, schedule, budget, and quality.
In procurement, this phase encompasses the solicitation posting, question and answer period, evaluation, and contract award. As the buyer, you’re coordinating the evaluation team, facilitating communication between stakeholders, managing procurement timelines, and ensuring the process remains open, fair, and transparent.
Like a project manager, buyers should focus not only on what is happening today, but also on what could impact the procurement tomorrow. Buyers are often responsible for managing the critical path of a procurement, where delays in evaluations, approvals, negotiations, references, or contract conditions can have downstream impacts on project delivery, funding deadlines, budget approvals, operational needs, or construction schedules.
This means continually asking:
- Are we on track to meet our procurement milestones and award timelines?
- What risks or issues could impact the success if left unaddressed?
- Are stakeholders aligned, informed, and prepared to complete their responsibilities on time?
Like projects, procurement involve dependencies and delays in evaluations, approvals, negotiations, or contract execution can quickly impact the overall schedule.
A successful procurement requires more than following a process. Buyers can prevent delays and support informed decision making by actively monitoring progress, identifying risks early, and maintaining clear communication with stakeholders.
Understanding and managing the procurement’s critical path helps buyers anticipate bottlenecks before they occur and minimize impacts to project delivery.
A fair, transparent, and well-documented process also strengthens the organization’s ability to respond to vendor debriefs, audits, and challenges.
Controlling Phase
Project managers continuously monitor progress against a baseline, use regular check-ins to identify issues early, and adjust before small problems become costly or time-consuming.
This is often the phase where procurement is least involved. Once an award is made, day-to-day contract management typically shifts to the department. However, applying a project management mindset at this stage still provides value.
Procurement can support departments by ensuring performance measures, service levels, and reporting requirements are clearly established at the outset and monitored throughout the contract term.
Where vendor performance issues arise, procurement should be involved early. This is not only to help resolve the issue, but also because performance concerns can eventually lead to supplier suspension, debarment, bonding issues, or the need to re-procure the work.
Regular check-ins with departments help identify and address issues while they are still manageable rather than after they have escalated.
Closing Phase
As part of the closing phase, project managers obtain formal sign-off from stakeholders, ensure documentation is complete, and capture lessons learned. It is a deliberate phase of the project, not something that automatically happens when the work ends.
For buyers, closeout may include debriefs, confirming performance bonds are returned, contract end dates are tracked, and related requirements such as insurance certificates and workplace safety documentation are formally closed in accordance with organizational policies.
This is also the time to document lessons learned while the procurement is still fresh in everyone’s minds.
Circle back to the success metrics established during initiation and assess how the procurement performed against them. Were timelines met? Did the contract deliver the intended outcomes? Were there challenges that should be addressed in future procurements?
If this step is skipped, the same specification gaps, timeline issues, or evaluation ambiguities often resurface in future procurements.
None of these phases occur in isolation. Decisions made early in the process can make later stages either much easier or significantly more difficult. Good project managers continuously refine their plans as more information becomes available, and they identify risks early so they can build contingencies before those risks become real problems. The same discipline can apply to procurement professionals.
While organizations may apply these concepts with varying levels of formality, a few simple project management tools can help buyers put these principles into practice.
Three Practical Tools to Optimize Your Procurements
Not every organization needs formal project management software or extensive project documentation. A few simple tools can make a significant difference in how you run your procurements more efficiently.
1. Procurement Charter
Similar to a project charter, create a one-page document at the start that captures the business need, stakeholders, budget, key risks, and success criteria. This helps align expectations before scope development begins.
2. Milestone-Based Schedule
Develop a schedule identifying key procurement milestones, responsibilities, and targeted completion dates. Obtaining stakeholder agreement on timelines up front helps avoid misunderstandings and delays.
3. Lessons-Learned Log
Maintain a record of observations throughout the procurement process. Notes on stakeholder engagement, document quality, evaluation challenges, and vendor performance can help reduce issues and improve future procurements.
Procurement professionals may not have “project manager” in their job title, but many of the same principles apply. By viewing procurement through a project management lens, buyers can better manage priorities, align stakeholders, mitigate risks, and deliver more efficient, defensible, and successful outcomes.