Blake Morgan helps secure major global procurement award for NHS England

An NHS England & Improvement and TWS Partners project on which Blake Morgan advised has been declared the winner of a prestigious World Procurement Award in the virtual ceremony for the 2020 awards.

The NHS Hepatitis C project won in the category of External Collaboration Award against fierce competition from across the world, beating firms that included IBM, Mars and Unilever to claim the prize.

The Blake Morgan team was led by Chairman Bruce Potter and supported by partners Penri Desscan, Simon McCann and Jo Thompson, along with consultant Emyr Lewis.  The team provided legal advice for all key aspects of the project, including planning and designing the procurement, the contractual work to support the procurement itself, and litigation advice on challenges to the process.

The project aims to eliminate Hepatitis C in the UK – which currently affects around 215,000 people across the nation – by 2025.  This will be ahead of the WHO’s 2030 deadline and is on track to meet its target.  The Hepatitis C project had to withstand a significant legal challenge before it could finally be launched, and this, combined with the efficient development of the procurement process, contributed to the project’s awards success.

This victory follows another recent success for the Hepatitis C project, as it also won Public Procurement Project of the Year at the National CIPS (Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply) Supply Management Awards earlier in 2020.  Such accolades are a well-deserved acknowledgement of a well-managed and innovative project that has already helped significant numbers of people.

Bruce Potter, Blake Morgan’s Chairman and team lead for the project, said: “This award is a recognition of three years of hard work by the team to push the boundaries of what could be achieved in public procurement.  Not only did we help design the new procurement methodologies deployed, but we also helped NHS England successfully defend a major legal challenge which enabled the treatment of Hepatitis C patients to be improved and accelerated.  The true success of the project will be measured by the lives saved and people helped as we work towards beating this disease.”