The Procurement Team
Purchasing materials and services is a central part of delivering ITA services across the City of LA. As a large government organization, the purchasing process can be complicated and time consuming. As you can imagine, this causes frustration and delays. Fortunately, ITA staff have been working hard to improve the City's procurement systems and processes. This month, our spotlight shines on the ITA Procurement System Team.
On November 1, 2018 the ITA Procurement System Team completed 16 months of hard work to launch Phase 2 of the Procurement System (digitizing Construction Services). Working closely with experts in the Board of Public Works (BPW), Bureau of Engineering (BOE), Bureau of Contract Administration (BCA), General Services (GSD), and other departments, the ITA team built, configured, and integrated systems to handle purchasing bids, vendor responses, RFPs, contracts, and vendor payments. This built on the Procurement System Phase 1 project completed in July 2017 for commodities and supplies.
The ITA team expanded and enhanced the use of the LABAVN, FMS, and Documentum systems, then proceeded to add the Citywide Forms platform (Adobe pdf). At each step, the team reviewed, evaluated and worked with City staff to expedite the process - using a "Turbo Tax" approach. This includes automated workflow approvals, reminders, and escalation to managers when the purchasing process is stalled. They even integrated Chip, the City's "bot" technology, allowing users to ask Chip the status of a bid opportunity, the needed forms, or what step to take next. The work of the ITA Procurement Team greatly improves the City's age-old issues with procurement and purchasing.
So in appreciation for a job very well done, here's to the ITA Procurement Team, ITA's January Spotlight of the Month!
THE ITA PROCUREMENT TEAM:
Sohn Nguyen Judy Chu Jose Alvarez
Nima Asgari Jeremy Stout Rick Sun
Anne Phu Jason Joseph CGI Team
David Ly Dustin Rhodes
David Parker Kaylee Kim
Fernando Lucchini Alexsandra Dean
Rajan Chidambaram Russell Carter
Hemamalini Madhanguru Priyanka Purushu
James Wu Sara Nayerian
Elise Lin
Ernest Banh
Sam W. Kim
Francis Cheng
Ben Hua
Bruce Wise
Dina Najeeb
Joey Tu
Tony Tai