9am – Fair Bids for Better Buys

Amy Hill and Melissa Snowdon

Single-bid solicitations. Cancelled procurements. Growing pressure to balance fairness with speed. Procurement professionals are navigating all of it as supply chains shift and domestic capacity becomes a bigger priority.

Hear directly from the Competition Bureau Canada and the Office of the Procurement Ombud (OPO) on what's driving these challenges and what you can actually do about them in your own procurement processes.

What you'll learn

• Why single-bid solicitations and cancellations happen, and how to reduce them
• Important considerations to encourage competitive bids
• Fairness, openness, and transparency principles you can apply immediately
• Where to find Competition Bureau and OPO resources when you need them

Who should attend

Procurement and supply chain professionals, purchasing and contract managers, and anyone involved in government contracting who wants sharper, more defensible procurement practices.

Speakers

Representatives from the Competition Bureau Canada and the Office of the Procurement Ombud, taking questions live.

1pm - AI for Supply Chain Productivity

Ian Gonzalez

This course was designed specifically for supply chain professionals who want to move beyond generic AI demonstrations and learn how Copilot can be applied to the challenges they face every day: spend analysis, supplier management, strategic sourcing, procurement analytics, inventory planning, market intelligence, and executive reporting.

Whether you are completely new to AI or already experimenting with Copilot, this session will show you practical techniques that can immediately improve productivity and decision-making. Participants will learn not only how to use Copilot, but also how to ask better questions, structure more effective prompts, validate AI-generated outputs, and incorporate AI into real-world supply chain workflows.

Unlike many AI courses that focus on generic business examples, every demonstration and exercise is tailored to supply chain and procurement scenarios. You'll see how Copilot can help analyze spend data, evaluate RFP responses, generate supplier intelligence, create executive-ready summaries, and uncover insights that would otherwise require hours of manual work.

Participants will also learn practical prompt engineering techniques – including methods for improving response quality, reducing hallucinations, and generating more evidence-based outputs. These are the same techniques being used by leading AI practitioners and organizations to move from casual AI usage to meaningful business value.

Who Should Attend?

• Procurement professionals
• Strategic sourcing specialists
• Supply chain analysts
• Category managers
• Inventory and planning professionals
• Supply chain leaders and managers
• Anyone interested in applying AI to supply chain and procurement processes