Panel | How do you get what you want, the right way? A procurement journey

20 Aug 2026
AFAC | Meeting Room 218
From Fremantle to London and from Sydney to New York, your procurement team is busy buying something for your organisation. Enabling hazard management goes beyond just responding to incidents. Behind the scenes, agencies are constantly working with suppliers to get the right equipment, ensure vehicles and assets are fit for purpose and maintained, that supporting systems and staff all work harmoniously, and that value for money is achieved. To enable this, a vast array of contractual agreements are copiously sourced, negotiated and managed. But the world is changing rapidly, and arming control agencies and communities with the necessary supply arrangements doesn’t happen by accident.

In the spirit of Leading Together how can procurement best adapt to the changing expectations of emergency management? How are the constantly changing commercial and economic realities impacting on the critical supply arrangements that enable emergency and hazard management?

This session will provide an insight into the opportunities and challenges of procurement, locally and globally. We will demonstrate how key partnerships, and the need to collaborate and use solutions that have integrity, are inclusive and have impact, to truly enable and uplift the capabilities of hazard management agencies. This will be detailed with real examples of how the best solutions for agencies have been sourced.

It is proposed that this session could be up to 90 minutes and will include a panel of procurement specialists from across AFAC Collaboration Model committees (Australasian/interjurisdictional) as well as industry stakeholders such as suppliers, and middle to upper agency executives. Consideration of moderator would include a procurement subject matter expert, agency executive, or a specialist drawn from one of the technical groups within the AFAC network.
 
Speakers
Ken Tuke
Ken Tuke, Chief Procurement Officer, Fire Rescue Victoria and Acting Chair, AFAC Collaborative Procurement Strategy Group
Kristy Phelps
Kristy Phelps, Acting Chief Officer, SA State Emergency Service
David Bywater
David Bywater, Deputy Director, ADF Aircrew Life Support Equipment
Daniel Earl
Daniel Earl, Assistant Director Strategic Procurement & Chair, Department of Fire and Emergency Services and AFAC Collaborative Procurement Strategy Group