Consider the following job specification. “Requires nerves of steel and a willingness to undergo sleep deprivation. Skilled at negotiating with Chinese officials by night and working across multiple time zones. Willing to make snap judgements with tens of millions of pounds at stake, knowing a nation is relying on you.” MI6? Government minister? Arms dealer? Gambler? Head of Procurement at Cardiff & Vale UHB?
Claire Salisbury is our Head of Procurement and the Assistant Director for the National Wales Shared Services Partnership (NWSSP). At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Claire received an invitation to a planning meeting on a Friday evening. The meeting took place the following day during which she understood we needed to build a 2000 bed hospital in just four weeks. By the Sunday she had prepared an order worth £8m so that by the Monday all the equipment and supplies required to open the Dragon’s Heart Hospital were on their way to Cardiff.
Several weeks later, she found herself negotiating with Chinese officials through an agent in the early hours of the morning. She had been allocated a manufacturing slot and knew that she must make a decision within an hour if she was to secure critical supplies such as PPE for Wales. We had a two-month supply of FFP3 masks and our Type 2 R masks would run out within weeks. Faced with a massive shortfall in Pip stock, Claire mobilised her network, and set her team working on a 24/7 rota. On her shopping list were the following items; 65 million fluid resistant masks for the four nations, and a further 189 million for Wales for £59m, 3.8 million FFP3 masks for £20.1m. This carried on for several weeks by which time Claire had bought 470 million gloves from two suppliers in the far east for £48.2m.
The due diligence which her team applied to these potential suppliers revealed that the global supply chains were widely fractured. The market was awash with fraudulent certificates and the clamour of global demand made for pressured and often disrupted communication. In this context, the challenge of securing safe and high-quality PPE for NHS Wales and the Social Care sector at a fair price fell to Claire and her team. If you think of procurement as a back-office function that is vaguely to do with buying stuff, then think again.
I was fortunate to distract Claire this week from a list of tasks that were very much more important than talking to me. This tells you something about the charm and efficiency that characterise Claire’s work. When she says, “People are our greatest strength” she means it. Her team won the HCSA Team of the Year and Go Awards Wales last year and Claire was highly commended and made Leader of the Year. Unusually perhaps, this charm sits alongside an uncompromising focus and a gaze which implores you to get to the point. Claire puts this down to being married to an accountant whose business-like approach to problem solving has been of great service to Claire in her work.
In listening to Claire’s story, there are two themes that stand out as key influences on her work: the sense of belonging that comes from strong and enduring relationships with her local community but also with colleagues and suppliers; and the value of a long apprenticeship with exposure to different leadership styles and the space to develop her own way of leading.
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Date:2 March