Rick Grimm is the Chief Executive of the NIGP: The Institute for Public Procurement, a network of “over 18,000 Professionals working in the field of Public Procurement”.  In that position, he has clearly become one of the most influential people in a field that’s getting a growing amount of attention over time. He will be retiring at the end of this year, and so it felt appropriate to provide him with a soapbox to reflect on many of the lessons he’s learned over the years.

As Cheral Manke, Procurement Innovation Manager in Washington State, said “Rick Grimm has been a transformative leader in the field of public procurement. He has dedicated his career to advancing the profession through education, strategic partnerships, and innovative initiatives. His leadership has strengthened NIGP’s role as a guiding force for procurement professionals, ensuring we have the tools, knowledge, and support needed to excel. . . His leadership extends beyond strategy—it is rooted in a genuine passion for people, making a lasting impact on both the profession and the individuals within it.” 

In the conversation that follows, we invited Rick Grimm to reflect on his life in public sector procurement and how the field has evolved over time. 

Q: Tell us a little about how you got involved in procurement?

The interesting part of the story is that initially I was an antagonist of public procurement. I graduated from the University of Miami in 1975, and I was hired in Miami-Dade County. One of my later appointments was the Fleet Management Administrator over a fleet of vehicles and heavy equipment. A part of my responsibility was to work with procurement to make sure we had vehicles, fuel, parts, tires, etc. 

So, from my point of view, procurement couldn’t do anything right. Part of this was because I was young and I wanted to be an antagonist. But though it wasn’t intentional, there were situations where we couldn’t get fuel or vehicles delivered on time. And I couldn’t get parts for the garbage trucks, so I’d have a fleet crew at the garage and the vehicles were sitting there because we couldn’t complete the repairs. Eventfully, the Procurement Director retired, and my boss appointed me to the position and said to me “stop complaining and fix the problem.”

Q: What kind of experience with procurement had you had at that time? 

I had no idea what procurement was. I just knew it didn’t work for me. So, I heard about this NIGP organization and that’s where I started taking classes and got certified.

Q: Did you stay in that job for a long while?

No,  only three years. After I refused to issue a Purchasing Order because it violated a County ordinance, the County Manager’s office said ‘we don’t need you anymore.’ And I spent seven grueling months looking for another job without the help of the Internet and landed in a mid-sized school district in northern Denver in 1989. NIGP held its annual conference in Denver in 1995, and I served as co-chair for the local planning committee. And that led to my joining the NIGP board in 1996 and I became CEO in 1998.

Q: Great story. We’re curious to hear what you think has been the biggest change in the world of procurement since then.

By far the biggest has been the technology. It used to be that almost everything was a paper process. Requisitions and purchase orders were typed and came in five colors, one went to finance, one to procurement and so on. And so, White-Out would come in five different colors. In the 1990s we started to gravitate to automated systems for public procurement, but there are still a handful of organizations out there that are still working with a paper process, which is crazy, because technology allows you to automate the process. It's typically the organizations that are so big that they can't afford to automate.

Q: So, over the years as technology has spread, what have been the biggest challenges?

I would say, of course, the biggest challenge is finding the right solution and then finding a way in which you're going to finance it. We find a lot of ERPs are comprehensive across many departmental disciplines, but they are basically financial systems, and the procurement function is bolted onto the financial system and not as comprehensive as it should be.

Q: Any other current challenges of note?

The necessary skill of data literacy is still not quite there. The new challenge is that some communities are not assessing their procurement data so that it informs them about future buying requirements. 

Data literacy is knowing how to interpret data. It's knowing how to request the right data from these systems. A lot of these systems are built to be able to retrieve data, aggregate it, and help make better decisions such as consolidation, standardization, and maverick buying, for the future.  Data literacy is important to make better decisions. So, it’s not so much a technology issue, but a talent issue.

Q: Since you’re talking about talent, how hard is it right now to get people who want to go into procurement in the first place?

It’s still a significant challenge. And it’s gotten only slightly better since the pandemic. And the university curriculum isn’t helping. In public administration programs, they're teaching students how to do public finance and develop policy, but there is little attention paid to public procurement even though it’s the second highest expenditure in their government. Typically, there's not a single class, much less a concentration on public procurement. Now, maybe that's an over generalization, but I can tell you, if there's even 5 percent to 10 percent of colleges and universities that have it in their public administration programs, I would be surprised.

Q: How can the profession deal with that?

The way we’re working on that talent issue is to have people think of procurement as a career. And at NIGP, one of our success stories is our concierge program where we literally are providing multi-year guidance counseling for new people coming into the profession. Over 500 individuals have gone through this program so far.  Each is a customized experience where we sit with them, listen to their aspirations, and say, “Okay, here's a pathway for you. Here's what I would recommend for you across multiple years in terms of learning, credentialing, and getting promotions, etc.”

Q: That’s a route to more successful recruitment, but what about retention?

When I do presentations, I encourage the audience to ‘lead with retention, not recruitment.’ People, particularly the younger generations, are going to stay if you care about them, support their career aspirations, and give them an opportunity to be purposeful, right? And you need to also understand that governmental entities are competing against each other for talent so benefits like teleworking and making an impact are critical.

Q: Let’s talk a little about cooperative contracting

When you are getting together with several procurement organizations to buy cooperatively, that probably is your best deal.  It’s organizations coming together with similar needs and deciding to aggregate their purchases under a single solicitation. I need to buy three items and two others need to buy the same three items, so let’s get together and buy nine.

Q: Have you had any personal experiences with this kind of work? 

I had experience with that back when I was working with the school districts in Colorado. We actually created a cooperative educational council for the school districts that were in the area. And we would get together monthly and say, “OK who’s going to buy art supplies for the schools? Who’s going to buy food. Who’s going to do school bus maintenance? And we would agree. These were pure cooperatives. 

However, when you look at most of the traditional cooperatives in the marketplace, they are using a different model – most likely a lead public agency model that allows others to purchase (piggyback) off that contract.  Cooperative buying in this way offers them a vehicle through which they can purchase goods and services, saving time and money. However, many entities don’t have the capacity to assess whether a cooperative contract is a good bet or not and due diligence is important in public procurement. 

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