When it comes to bridging the communication gaps between the public and private sector, John Davis is the man you want on the job.
Since 1989, Davis, the CEO of Partnering & Procurement Inc., has been in the business of helping the public sector write the tenders, contracts and RFPs that help them engage the private sector in addressing major initiatives.
Davis, who has been an entrepreneur and an IT professional through a 30-year career, said his ultimate goal is in helping clients manage their expectations and align strategic objectives with operational imperatives.
“Part of our role is to identify what our clients want to achieve,” he said. “We ask them, ‘What comes first? What can be done next?’ And then, ‘What can we leave until later?’ If we don’t express it like that and we write a contract that has an expectation that we’re going to have it all right out of the gate, but we can’t deliver on it, then we’re going to see some frustration and a breakdown in terms of relationships among the players.”
Over the last 14 years Davis has worked on projects such as the Secure Channel for the federal government, the integrated Wide Area Network initiatives with the Province of Nova Scotia and the Ontario Business Connects initiative.
“We tend to work on fairly challenging or fairly large initiatives in the public sector,” he said. “A lot of our value is in that – as practitioners – we’ve got a lot more exposure to what has worked and what hasn’t across multiple initiatives and across multiple jurisdictions.”