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Eleanor Aspey
Research Topic:
The Impact of the EC Procurement Rules on Corporate Responsibility in the Supply Chain: a Study of Utilities
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Eleanor Aspey obtained her LLB from the University of Nottingham in 2007 before being awarded a CASE studentship for her PhD, commencing in Autumn 2008. She has now finished Nottingham's MA in Socio-Legal and Criminological Research, acquiring the empirical research skills necessary for her project. Her research project will examine the effect of the EC procurement legislation on the implementation of corporate social responsibility policies by the UK utilities. The project aims to discover any problems and uncertainties in this area caused by the EC rules, any positive benefits of the rules on designing corporate social responsibility policies and the response of the utility sector in practice. The project will involve legal analysis of the relevant EC rules and empirical research, interviewing those responsible for implementing CSR policies in a sample of UK utilities. Her research is funded by the ESRC and Achilles Information Ltd. She is supervised by Professor Sue Arrowsmith, Professor David Fraser and Frances Darton of Achilles Information Ltd.
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Paula Bordalo Faustino
Research Topic:
Public Procurement Award Criteria in the EU Member States: A Comparative Case Study
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Paula Bordalo Faustino is a Portuguese lawyer, specialized in public law (namely public procurement), with over four years of experience in the implementation of procurement procedures. She has a degree in Law from the Law School of the Lisbon University (Portugal, 1996-2001), and attended the taught modules of a Masters Degree in Legal Political Sciences at the same school in 2002-2003. More recently she collaborated in drafting the Portuguese Public Contracts' Code (implementing EC directives 2004/17 and 2004/18) together with the task force assigned for such purpose by the Portuguese government. Since then she has been invited to lecture post-graduate modules on public procurement in all major Portuguese law schools. She has also become a professional trainer on public procurement for the Portuguese Public Administration.
The aim of her research project is to increase the understanding of the use - and possible abuse or misuse - of contract award criteria in public procurement procedures by analysing procurement practices in four Member States: Portugal and France (representing the civil law system), the United Kingdom and Ireland (representing the common law one). Paula believes that comparing and contrasting the public procurement practices in these four countries is likely to produce interesting and profitable results taking into account the two distinct legal approaches they derive from: the first tending to be based on codifications, which control the exercise of judicial power and limit the discretion of the executive one; and the second being largely case-centred and heavily reliant on judicial interpretation of general principles.
It is expected that by applying legal analysis methods the research will be able to constitute a useful and original contribution to the targeting of best practices as well as to the identification of those which can benefit from some improvement. Doing so in the light of the (apparent) divergence between civil law and common law approaches will raise the discussion on the extent to which legal system heritage is responsible for specific features of public procurement practices, in spite of the European common source (the EC directives on public procurement). The main purpose of this critical and comparative research is to allow for an opportunity to share “lessons learned” and to encourage an inter-national exchange of best practices concerning public contract award criteria.
Paula started her research project in October 2009. She is jointly supervised by Dr. Ping Wang and Professor David Fraser. She had secured a Law School scholarship for her research, but later she was successful in obtaining funding from the Portuguese Governmental Research Funding Body (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia).
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Richard Craven
Research Topic:
Procurement procedures under the Private Finance Initiative: the operation of the new legal framework
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Richard 's project will investigate the application of the new 'competitive dialogue' procedure in the EC public procurement rules to projects tendered under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). The UK's PFI refers to an approach to procurement whereby the private sector finances, builds and operates public infrastructure, and receives payment spread over the contract period, typically 20 years or more. The procurement process for selecting the winning consortium and setting the terms of the agreement is crucial for value for money. Prior to 2004 the process was regulated by EC legislation designed in the 1970s. However, these did not provide satisfactory procedures for PFI projects. Thus new legislation in 2004, (Directive 2004/18) introduced a new procedure for these projects, competitive dialogue.
The project's aim is to examine the way in which the new legal framework for competitive dialogue is applied to PFI projects in the UK, and actors' perceptions of that framework. It will identify: perceived positive aspects of the framework in facilitating best practice; perceived problems, including any legal uncertainty and constraints on best practice; strategies to conduct the process within the constraints; and the factors that influence compliance and approach to legal risk.
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Serban Filipon
Research Topic:
Framework Agreements, Qualification Systems and Supplier Lists
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Serban Filipon has an LLB from the University of Bucharest and a PGDip in International Business Law from the Academy of Economic Studies (Bucharest). He is also a qualified and certified legal adviser in Romania and a member of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, with over five years of experience in the implementation of procurement procedures, in particular within EC financed projects.
The aim of his research project is to examine in a critical and comparative way how various public procurement systems deal with regular purchases, more specifically how they deal with and regulate, without limitation, framework agreements, qualification lists and supplier lists. Basically, the research will assess any method that may be implementing by a purchasing organisation when it seeks to place more than one contract (or order) using only one public procurement award exercise.
The project will involve researching various systems: Romania and the UK, by reference to the relevant EC law and case law, the US, potentially one African developing country, the WB and the UNCITRAL. This sample of systems was selected as it provides for various perspectives on the aims and traditions of public procurement.
It is expected that by applying legal analysis methods as well as by taking a trans-disciplinary approach to this sample of procurement systems the research will be able to identify an ‘ideal’ and general ‘model’ for regular purchases that could then be used as guidance and adapted as necessary to each individual procurement system or exercise by legislators or procurement officers.
Thus, the main research question is how best to regulate regular purchases at a general level that might be adapted by Governments to local conditions, i.e. to identify the core process by de-constructing and analysing a number of existing systems and by reconstructing an ‘ideal’ or reference package of regulation at a general policy level
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Mehmet Bedii Kaya
Research Topic:
The correlation between public procurement and development: the case of Turkey
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Mehmet Bedii Kaya is a Turkish lawyer specialized in administrative law and information technology law. He has Law degree from Istanbul Bilgi University and he recently completed an LL.M. in Business Law at the same university. His dissertation on Information Technology Law was fully funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (“TUBITAK”) and the dissertation was published as a book. Mehmet’s research at the University of Nottingham is also sponsored by the Turkish Ministry of National Education and after completing the PhD he is expected to be an academic member of Marmara University, a public university in Istanbul.
Mehmet’s research project focuses on the correlation between public procurement and development. There are three main objectives of his research. Firstly, his research aims to examine the correlation between public procurement and development; to highlight benefits and drawbacks of using public procurement as a development policy tool; to map methods of pursuing development policies through public procurement. Secondly, his research attempts to demonstrate how Turkey as a developing country can use public procurement efficiently for its development. This will be carried out through analyzing the impact of the European Union policies on Turkey in the context of development. Lastly, his research seeks to identify possible options for improving a development-oriented public procurement regulation in Turkey.
Mehmet started his research project in October 2009 under the joint supervision of Dr. Annamaria La Chimia and Dr. Ping Wang
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