Overview
AI can speed up procurement if you can prove it’s fair, safe and defensible. This course shows you how.
Procurement remains one of government’s largest operational functions. Australian Government procurement activity was reported at AUD $104.9 billion in 2024–25, reinforcing the importance of strong procurement governance, consistency and decision-making across the public sector (Australian Government Procurement Statistics, Department of Finance). At the same time, government procurement teams across Australia and New Zealand are entering a critical phase of AI adoption, with agencies under increasing pressure to improve speed, productivity and operational efficiency while maintaining transparency, governance and supplier fairness.
In 2026, the focus has shifted from experimentation to practical implementation, with the APS AI Plan and New Zealand’s Public Service AI Framework driving stronger expectations around AI governance, accountability, privacy and human oversight. This course helps procurement teams respond confidently with practical, governance-focused approaches that can be applied immediately in real procurement environments.
Leave with clear guardrails and practical templates you can use straight away, without compromising probity, privacy or supplier fairness.
Designed for procurement teams with uneven AI maturity and limited time, this practical training focuses on low-effort, high-control ways to use AI safely and consistently. It shows where AI can genuinely support procurement workflows and where it should not be used, without replacing procurement judgment or automating decision-making. Participants learn defensible, low-risk approaches to improve drafting quality, policy compliance, workflow consistency and administrative efficiency, while maintaining human accountability and strong governance. The session applies directly to real procurement outputs (plans, tender and evaluation documentation, supplier correspondence and internal guidance) and includes practical guardrails for confidentiality, bias, transparency, cyber risk and probity.
Key outcomes include:
- A clear, practical understanding of what AI is and how it applies across the procurement lifecycle
- Practical AI applications for procurement drafting, QA and internal guidance
- Human review frameworks to support probity and defensible decision-making
- Governance guardrails for privacy, cyber risk, transparency and supplier fairness
- How to sense-check supplier and market use of AI when assessing responses and offers
- AI procurement considerations including clauses, approvals and risk assessment
- Workflow approaches that improve consistency without overcomplicating governance
- Ethical and social procurement considerations including SMEs, Indigenous suppliers and collaborative procurement
Who Should Attend?
Relevant to roles across procurement, supplier management, contract oversight and delivery performance:
Senior Procurement Officer Procurement Advisor Procurement Specialist Procurement Manager Strategic Sourcing Manager Category Manager Contract Manager (involved in contract setup and risk) Commercial Manager Tender and Evaluation Lead Supplier Relationship Manager Probity Advisor Governance / Risk / Compliance Officer Procurement Policy Officer Director Procurement Director Commercial Services Head of Procurement Also relevant for: Contract Manager (focused on delivery) Logistics/Supply Chain (decision-making roles only: supplier risk, planning, dependencies, not operational execution)
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
Explain what AI is and is not, in plain terms relevant to procurement work
Identify where AI adds the most value across the procurement lifecycle (and where it creates unacceptable risk)
Apply AI to draft and QA procurement documentation safely
Use review standards and “human-in-the-loop” checks for AI-assisted outputs
Set practical guardrails for accuracy, bias, transparency, confidentiality, privacy and probity
Understand where AI should not be used (especially evaluation scoring and supplier assessment decisions)
Sense-check how a supplier or the market is using AI within a tender response, so this can be factored into assessment
Assess AI-related supplier and procurement risks (clauses, approvals, banned-use considerations, cyber/privacy risks)
Improve consistency in team AI usage through repeatable prompts, checklists and governance workflows
Online Training
AI in Procurement: Practical Applications, Risk and Governance
Session details
- Get clear guidance on what procurement teams can safely use AI for, and what should be avoided
- Build a working understanding of AI and governance fundamentals, including what human-in-the-loop means in practice
- Use practical prompts and checklists to speed up drafting and QA of procurement documents
- Strengthen probity, privacy and supplier fairness through fit-for-purpose governance guardrails
- Learn how to sense-check a supplier’s or the market’s use of AI, and what to do with that information during assessment
- Understand how AI changes supplier and contracting risk (including clauses, approvals and banned uses)
- Leave with templates: review checklists, red/amber/green rules and implementation steps for your team
Some familiarity with topic is recommended
Key Sessions
Foundations, practical applications and safe drafting/QA
Welcome, objectives & ground rules
- Purpose, outcomes, how the 2 days run
- “Safe and defensible” AI use in procurement (human accountability, probity, confidentiality)
- Procurement lifecycle use-case map (high-value/low-risk vs high-risk/avoid)
- Clear boundaries: AI must not replace procurement judgment or automate decisions
- Drafting structures, scope, assumptions, risks, market approach
- How to avoid “confident but wrong” content
Activity: draft a section and run a structured review checklist
- Drafting and improving tender documents (clarity, completeness, internal consistency)
- QA patterns: ambiguity, contradictions, missing requirements
Activity: refine an RFT excerpt using controlled prompting and a QA pass
- Drafting supplier communications without compromising probity or fairness
- Drafting internal memos and records that are audit-ready (without outsourcing judgment)
(Part 2): Practical lab — correspondence and memo drafting
Activity: rewrite a supplier email and internal memo using safe prompts and a review standard
Reflections and Closing Remarks
- Key takeaways and what changes tomorrow (governance, supplier AI risk, implementation)
Welcome and Recap
- Recap Day 1
- Reconfirm “do / don’t” boundaries (especially around evaluation and decision-making)
- Red/amber/green rules for sensitive information and tool use
- Approvals: what needs sign-off, when, and what evidence is required (mapped to your agency’s own approval structure)
- Record-keeping and auditability expectations
- Review roles and accountability, and how to apply this within your own team structure
- Quality standards: accuracy, bias/fairness, transparency, traceability
- Activity: apply a “human review” framework to an AI-generated procurement output
- What AI can assist with: structure, completeness checks, consistency, evidence mapping prompts
- What AI must NOT do: scoring, rankings, supplier determinations
Activity: turn messy notes into a structured evaluation narrative without making scoring decisions
- What to assess before adopting AI-enabled solutions in government environments
- How to sense-check a supplier’s or the broader market’s use of AI within a tender response: what to look for, what questions to ask, and how to read AI-related claims critically
- Using this sense-check to inform how you work with supplier responses, not as a scored criterion
- Where risks show up: privacy, cyber, transparency, banned-use considerations
(Part 2): Practical supplier risk and contracting checklist
- AI clauses and approval requirements
- Supplier due diligence questions and a minimum evidence set, including the market sense-check from Part 1
Activity: build a supplier AI risk checklist your team can reuse
- Participants leave with: example prompts (drafting, QA and compliance checking)
- Review checklists (quality, risk, probity, confidentiality)
- Governance guardrails (red/amber/green and escalation triggers)
- A supplier/market AI sense-check guide for use during tender assessment
- A lightweight rollout approach to standardise team usage
Reflections and Closing Remarks
- 30-day next steps and final Q&A
Meet Your Facilitator
Amanda Branley FCIPS
Procurement Consultant and Coach | The Procurement Coach
Amanda Branley FCIPS is the founder and principal of The Procurement Coach, working with procurement leaders and teams across the public and private sectors to build capability, shift culture, and deliver outcomes that matter.
A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, Amanda led the procurement function and a transformation at the Public Transport Authority of Western Australia through a pandemic and the organisation’s $2 billion infrastructure investment program.
Amanda is an active member of World Commerce and Contracting (WorldCC) and CIPS, presenting at WorldCC and CIPS conferences and delivering webinars to State and Federal government procurement leaders and practitioners. She is also a tutor delivering CIPS skills training and accredited training. She brings deep contextual knowledge of WA State Government alongside broad experience across commercial environments, and a practical, no-nonsense approach to the hard problems procurement teams face.
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