#112 - National Broadband: The right choice for CPO appointment

The new CPO for the National Broadband Network [NBN] company started work 1st February, Alasdair Fuller – an obvious but sensible choice.

Until Christmas he was CPO at OPTUS with whom he has worked for the last nine years based latterly in North Ryde. Doubtless the executive search firm considered only fleetingly the merits of appointing anyone from Telstra – given the stand-off between the NBN owners (the federal government of course) and the spurned bidder in the ill fated tender process last year ….. see previous blogs 29, 38, 48 and 109

In a number of ways, the new NBNCo CPOs role is to be much envied: a Greenfield site, reporting to a director on the management board , procurement as part of the core business process for years to come, a purchasing process designed from scratch by top-class specialist procurement consultants and the chance to recruit his own team by June to join him in North Sydney.

On the other hand, there are few more challenging or complex regulatory environments within which to develop and deliver any procurement strategy than the telecommunications sector. And working in any state-owned-enterprise [SOE] can bring its own challenges - especially one with such lofty expecttions and such a high-profile. So does an addressable spend in the billions – the lion’s share of the $43billion budgeted by communications minister Stephen Conroy to finance the development of the NBN. In fact, it might just be the largest single procurement project in Australian history? No pressure there then. 

So, this should keep Mr Fuller and his imminent new procurement team busy for every waking minute of the eight years that it is planned to take to deliver the thing. Good luck Alasdair then.

The Buyer – posted 11 Feb 2010      

The views of THE BUYER are personal and are not necessarily those of Procurement Professional magazine, BTTB Marketing nor CIPS.