Case study · Procurement & risk
Procurement Save
- RoleProject Coordinator
- Context9 concurrent capital programs
- Scale$150K–$500K per program
- Relationships30+ vendors & contractors
The brief
As the primary point of contact across 30+ vendor and contractor relationships at GNY Equipment, every purchase order and change order moving through nine concurrent capital programs, each running $150K to $500K, passes through my desk before it reaches leadership.
I was the first set of eyes on all procurement activity: POs, change orders, and contract reviews across every active program. Building that review layer was part of the job, since it had often been overlooked in the past.
The approach
I caught an unconfirmed contract before it could trigger spend. I reviewed it with full situational context, then raised it with leadership before the purchase order went out. Leadership still wanted to keep the job moving, so rather than stall it outright, I built timelines that kept us aligned with the customer's needs while holding off on any large, unrecoverable spend until the contract was confirmed.
The hard part was managing upward. My supervisor wanted purchase orders placed despite the contract being unconfirmed, and the customer was pressing leadership directly to pull the delivery date earlier than what the quote specified. I had to push back on both the timeline and the pressure from above. With an unconfirmed PO and a casting schedule our vendor had already adjusted for us, there was no realistic way to hit the requested date. On a deal worth roughly $1.4 million, committing real spend on a verbal handshake was not a risk worth taking before the contract was firm.
The outcome
Prevented $50,000 to $60,000 in premature spend on an unconfirmed contract, and tightened the review step so the next one gets caught earlier in the cycle.
