Greg Dadd – Senior Fairness Advisor and Corporate Lead
Greg Dadd, as a Principal consultant at Optimus SBR, heads our Procurement and Fairness Advisory Services, leading the management and ongoing development of this consulting practice. He is accountable for delivering high priority projects and is a Senior Fairness Advisor and our Corporate Lead.
Greg has held senior positions within the public sector, as Director, Supply and Financial Services with the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC), and more recently as Chief Operating Officer of Ontario Realty Corporation (ORC), the agency which managed all activities involving the provincial government’s real estate portfolio. As a previous senior executive with responsibility for procurement throughout his career, Greg brings a range of experience in public procurement, providing strategic direction, executive oversight, team leadership, and detailed direction on including individual complex procurements and entire procurement programs valued at more than $100 million annually. He has direct hands-on experience with all procurement activities to ensure integrity, fairness, and best value in large-scale and complex acquisitions, including a number of outsourced contracts that were complex, highly visible, and politically sensitive.
As a previous senior executive with responsibility for procurement throughout his career, Greg brings a range of experience in public procurement, providing strategic direction, executive oversight, team leadership, and detailed direction on including individual complex procurements (including Information and Information Technology (I&IT) programs and services) and entire procurement programs valued at more than $100 million annually. He has direct hands-on experience with all procurement activities to ensure integrity, fairness and best value in large-scale and complex acquisitions, including a number of outsourced contracts that were complex, highly visible and politically sensitive.
Greg has completed multiple assignments in a Fairness Advisor role, providing the practical application of his earlier career experience and accountability for ensuring fair public procurement processes. Greg has been engaged as a Fairness Commissioner for a number of high-profile, complex multi-phase infrastructure projects valued in excess of $300 million in addition to multiple I&IT-related procurement projects. All the Infrastructure Ontario projects as well as other of Greg’s engagements have dealt with alternate procurement approaches, including multi-phase procurements (REOI/RFI, RFQ/RFSQ, RFP), and supplier interaction including multiple vendor engagement in commercially confidential meetings during all those phases. He has also been a Fairness Advisor for I&IT Limited Negotiation RFPs including a final “Best and Final Offer” (BAFO) procurement process.
Greg is very familiar with I&IT systems-related procurement strategies. While in the OPS, he participated in the planning and acquisition of organization and enterprise-level information technology and associated services. Greg was a member of MOHLTC’s I&IT Priority Review Board, whose function was to review business cases and set priorities for ministry program IT requirements. At the OPS corporate level, he was also a member of the e-Procurement Project Group, Co-Chair of the Information Technology Procurement Advisory Committee and the Team Leader of the Selection Committee for the acquisition of the government’s Integrated Financial Information System (IFIS). As COO at the Ontario Realty Corporation (ORC), Greg had responsibility for corporate I&IT (the CIO was a direct report) and Executive Lead for the enhancement of the corporate financial system (SAP) and development and implementation of new business applications for procurement, asset management and project delivery.
Through all the experiences noted above, Greg gained a clear understanding of a typical technology-related procurement cycle, including: development of business and technical criteria; use of Requests for Expressions of Interest/Information and Vendor Engagement meetings to determine current market capability; development of the RFP and associated technical and pricing documents (e.g. critical/mandatory and desirable capabilities, licensing and payment options, technical support services requirements – both human resources and internal data centre versus offsite location/hosted or cloud-based services options); evaluation criteria; vendor demonstrations to validate product capabilities and/or “proof of concept”; negotiations with the preferred proponent, and contract award and management.
Greg has very well-developed oral and written communications skills. Throughout his career, he has had to prepare and deliver presentations and associated supporting materials for briefings to senior management up to and including Ministers and the Secretary of Cabinet, as well as Boards of Directors. He has appeared before Cabinet and Public Accounts committees and made presentations in public forums and to Federal government organizations and committees. Greg was a part-time faculty member of the Canadian Forces Staff College, and in that capacity, reviewed and critiqued student submissions such as subject-matter papers and short theses, and assessed student presentation skills and materials. This experience has specifically contributed to his engaging training and facilitation sessions.
Greg’s responsibilities, both in his prior career as a senior public servant responsible for procurement and as a Fairness Commissioner, have required him to have expert knowledge of the standards of fairness and the legal framework of applicable trade agreements and government guidelines that regulate public sector procurement practices. One of his recent engagements included the need to become thoroughly familiar with the new trade agreements that came into effect in 2017 (Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) and the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA)) and their implications and application to public sector procurements. In addition, he has collaborated with legal advisors on many large and complex procurement projects, including consultations on the wording of terms and conditions, conflicts of interest identification and mitigation, as well as compliance disqualifications.
About Optimus SBR
Optimus SBR is an independently owned professional services firm with a focus on providing customized advisory services to organizations. The firm has a robust health-care practice area and has provided fairness services for a variety of large and complex projects – making them well-positioned to support the Panel through the site selection process. The Fairness Advisor’s role will ensure that the site selection process is transparent and unbiased by all involved parties.
