OREANDA-NEWS. January 27, 2015. The Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) has awarded Compania de Apa Oradea, a water management company in Romania, with the Corporate Certification – Primary Award for its development of global best practice within the organisation.

Compania de Apa Oradea is the first of six corporate clients of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) working in the water sector who are developing a programme of procurement excellence in their teams. The programmes are designed to grow the strategic capabilities of procurement staff and move activity away from a purely tactical function, improving efficiencies and encouraging transparency and accountability in public sector operations.
 
Will Beattie, Head of International Business development at CIPS, said: “We congratulate Compania de Apa Oradea on becoming the first Romanian company to achieve CIPS certification, This award recognises excellence in procurement and supply management through the assessment of an organisation’s purchasing policies, procedures, processes, infrastructure, tools and metrics.
 
The CIPS Corporate Certification awarded to Compania de Apa Oradea means they have the best practice for managing all procurement processes (collaboration, development, implementation and monitoring) according to international standards requirements. The Oradea team were extremely professional, collaborative and enthusiastic about the CIPS Corporate Certification process and their project management was excellent.”
 
Richard Gargrave, EBRD Senior Procurement Specialist, added: “We are delighted to be present at the award of the Corporate Certificate – Primary Award. We would like to congratulate Mr Ovidiu Gavra, the General Manager, for his enthusiastic support for the development of procurement within the company from a purely administrative function to a strategic function.
 
“As part of the package of measures used to promote global best practice, the EBRD identified professional procurement certification as a useful tool to enable its clients to benchmark the current status of their procurement procedures, practices and personnel and to identify steps which can be taken to improve procurement efficiency based on global best practice.”
 
Ovidiu Gavra, General Manager of Compania de Apa Oradea, said: “The CIPS Certification will help our company improve operational, technical, commercial and financial efficiency as well as build one integrated corporate structure and identity comprising of our water utility services.”
 
Presentation of the award was on 13 January 2015 by Will Beattie and Alan Martin, CIPS Corporate Certification Manager and Richard Gargrave Senior Procurement Specialist and Miruna Gala Associate Banker from EBRD and Ovidiu Gavra, General Manager, Compania de Apa Oradea.