From Day One to NHS England: Inside Procurement Law with Tomos Lewis

Getting your procurement officers involved and or getting your procurement lawyers involved at the very early stage usually means your overall program is usually quicker, better, less likely to lead to challenges later down the line. And that's where the delay usually happens is you get to challenge, you evaluate the award and then a challenge blows up and it just puts a pause on everything at a very late stage and at a stage where you can't quickly rewind things. So absolutely getting the right people involved at the very early stage, because those procurement officers or procurement lawyers will know where the problems lie. A fresh peer wise or a fresh input into the process and the documents as well will spot where things can go wrong, spot the issues, they can be fixed at a very early stage, which means you actually avoid the issue and the risk altogether and avoid the latter delay which may arise as a result of product the Powering Procurement Podcast is brought to you by Atomis source to contract software designed to save you time and money. Hello and welcome to Powering Procurement, a podcast by Atomis, where we unpack the world of procurement and supply chain management with the help of industry leaders. I'm your host Sian Lloyd and this is our resident expert Gareth Birch. Hi. After 20 years in procurement, I may be billed as an expert, but believe me, I'm here to learn too. Each episode, together with our expert guests, we'll dive into specific challenges and opportunities facing the procurement industry today and we'll explore easy wins and longer term strategies to help you rise to the challenge of driving value through your work while showcasing the power of procurement. So let's get going. Hello everyone and welcome back to Powering Procurement. Today's guest is someone who brings a legal perspective that's increasingly vital to modern procurement. Thomas Lewis is a partner at Blake Morgan, working within the firm's commercial and public sector team where he advises clients across the public, private and third sectors on some of the most complex and high profile procurement challenges in the uk. His expertise spans commercial law, public procurement, public and administrative law, data protection and information governance, with a particular focus on national and strategic procurements. He regularly advises on high value services and supplies, contracts, software licensing and hosting arrangements, as well as subsidy control, intellectual property and wider governance issues. Crucially for today's conversation, he works closely with contracting authorities, navigating the practical and legal realities of procurement regulation, including the nuances of how UK wide legislation applies in Wales. His work often involves supporting organisations through statutory challenges, judicial reviews and compliance, giving him a deep and real world understanding of how procurement law operates beyond the policy documents. With A reputation for clear, pragmatic advice and a strong grasp of both the legal and commercial realities. He's ideally placed to help us unpack what procurement legislation really means for professionals working in Wales today. We're delighted to welcome you to the podcast Kroj Sokanest Tovos Diofshan. Thank you for the invite. Great to be joining you today. Lovely. Well, really looking forward to this conversation and, you know, let's start by finding out a little bit more about you and learning what really led to you being in this position that you're currently in. Procurement's pretty central, isn't it? It's pretty focused to the role that you've currently got. Yeah, yeah, great question and I wish I could tell you, was something I always dreamed of and always intended to get into, but I guess it was to some extent largely by chance and the right opportunity presenting itself at the right time. A bit of a sliding doors moment, but I'm glad it happened. So I qualified as a solicitor Some, well, nearly 12 years ago and I was qualified as a litigator, as an industrial disease litigator, then went into group litigation and three or four years into my career, solicitor felt a bit lost, bit stagnated, I guess, and felt it was the right time for a new challenge and the opportunity. Always wanted to be a commercial lawyer, but the opportunity just hadn't kind of arisen by that stage. Half a tabi at the very least. Same time the opportunity or vacancy at Blake Morgan as a commercial lawyer came across my desk. Wasn't entirely sure I was the type of lawyer that they were looking for at the time, but thought, well, what's the worst can happen? Took the plunge and submitted my application and to my surprise, was asked to attend an interview with the firm. And I knew from reading the kind of team's profile, the individual's profiles at the time, that one of the biggest areas of law they advised, and it was public procurement. So I remember the night before my interview, reading through the public contract regulations which were enforced at the time, trying to make heads and tails of what that actually meant. And yeah, what on earth this procurement was, I guess I'd never come across it really before, so attended a couple of interviews with the team here, more in hope than expectation. But lo and behold, Yves Pifretti, the head of the Cardiff office first, Samuel Lewis, the doyeno Voschloh, Penri Descan, who's now the business group head, and Simon McCann, the great and unfortunately late Simon McCann, who passed away last year, took a chance on Me. So I joined the firm and on the very first day at the firm, I remember having a phone call from Bruce Potter, who's then chair of the company or the firm, asking me to join a phone call with NHS England to advise him on the procurement of a nationally critical drug. I won't even start to try and pronounce, it's about 17 letters long, but. So I joined that call and that was the start of my career in procurement law and I've not developed back since. So I've had the opportunity, some great opportunities in the last seven or eight years. Worked with some great big clients on some of the biggest project in England and Wales, and I've learned from some of the very best in the procurement law sphere, I guess. Brilliant. It's lovely to hear your story and you know what a great story it is. So from burning the midnight oil the night before the interview to that, and actually being thrown in at the deep end effectively as soon as you started, that'll be very inspiring for people and obviously congratulations on everything you're doing in terms of the role then that you've got. Now with Blake Morgan, how do you work with contracting authorities? So, by now we partner the commercial and public sector team here and we have a strong public procurement practice both in England and in Wales. I'm based in the Cardiff office, so I work primarily with Welsh authorities, but also with authorities in England. We advise not only contracting authorities, but also public sector bodies. So we see both sides of the coin, essentially. We see how contracting authorities. Kind of abide with procurement law and their processes, but we also see the other side and see the challenges faced by suppliers and how they interact with procurement law. So we work, and I work with a number of contracting authorities, be it national governments, legislatures, local governments, government departments and executive agencies, NHS bodies, universities and higher education institutions, and blue light services. So a broad range of contracting authorities and the team and I advise across the kind of whole range of procurement laws, so from policies and governance to procedures, tender, documentations, guiding authorities and suppliers through the entire process, from cradle to grave, clarifications, evaluations and the awards of contracts. And we also advise on legal challenges to procurements as well. So, yeah, being a former litigator, that helps. I also get to then scratch that itch of having to argue with someone occasionally. So I get that frustration out as well. So, yeah, we support and advise clients across the broad range of procurement law. I also advise on the contracts themselves, so the drafting of the contracts as well as the management of the contracts through the lifecycle of the contract itself. So, yeah, I advise on kind of the broad range of procurement law from cradle to grave. And I've had some really great opportunities as part of that. I mentioned NHS England earlier on and one of the kind of things I'm most proud of from my procurement law practice is having advised NHS England on the COVID 19 vaccination program. So whilst it was a very small part in that. Yeah. And again, it was burning the midnight oil, trying to get the supply arrangements in place to allow. I think it was Margaret Keenan who's the first recipient of a vaccine in the world. I think playing a small part of that shows kind of how real worldly what we do is. And kind of that's the sense of satisfaction I get from my job is seeing the impact we. We have on public services. I guess, being based in the Cardiff office, I look down over Cardiff Bay and I can see a number of the projects we've been involved with. And that's what gives me satisfaction at the end of the day, is seeing those projects through the procurement process and see them come to fruition and come to life. Yeah, gosh, yes. I was just thinking back then to when you mentioned that in Nottingham, I think it was, wasn't it, where the first COVID vaccine was given. Absolutely. And yeah, that really was a mom that I'm sure most of us won't forget. In terms of changes within legislation in procurement, you know, we've covered the Procurement Act 2023 in some detail over the podcast series. Obviously really important to the sector. So in terms of the impact of that on your job, you know, has that changed your job, obviously, due to the new legislation? I suppose, in terms of the impact that it's had on clients. Yeah. I guess the saying I'd go to is with any change comes opportunity. And I guess cynics will say with any opportunity comes opportunity for lawyers. So absolutely has kind of evolved my job. Absolutely. We've always been busy with procurement law, but with the change in or the introduction of the Procurement Act, a kind of the biggest reform of procurement law in a generation, that's giving us opportunities to work with clients a bit more closely. They wanted that support and guidance to implement and understand what the act means for them in practice. So the majority of 2024 I spent with clients providing training, support, guidance, reviewing documents and helping them prepare for the implementation of the Act. And then the majority of 2025 saw kind of the implementation of the act and helping clients when they were dipping their toes in the water and having to implement the Act. So it has been a huge change, I guess. The principles of public procurement are largely unchanged, and the golden thread remains within the old regulations of the new Act. But certainly there have been new provisions, new requirements, changes, changes, procedures, changes in what authorities have to do. So it has been a huge change. So our role has been essentially helping the authorities overcome that change, implement that change, embrace that change, I guess, and making the most of the opportunities that come with change. So that's something I've really enjoyed doing in helping clients and different clients in different ways to do that. Yeah. And you said earlier that sometimes it's nice to scratch that itch around litigation. So I wonder if there's any insights that perhaps you can give us in terms of perhaps any challenges yet that you have been involved with yet in terms of advising clients? Obviously not to name anyone specifically. No. No. So, yeah, we. We've not had any Procurement act specific judgments as of yet, but there are certainly court proceedings up and running, some of which we are involved with are more generally the challenges of the act itself, not necessarily proceedings, but issues and concerns that authorities have had. And there are many of them, and there are some great things about the act, but there's still some gray areas, some things which cause rise to concerns for authorities. So some particular examples, I guess, start off with the procedures and processes. We've gone from a very prescriptive regime where authorities were quite clear as to what they could and shouldn't be doing with the procedures, to something which has given them much more flexibility to design their own processes. So they've gone from that kind of certainty to flexibility. And with flexibility comes uncertainty. I guess from these statistics, we can see that authorities have been possibly quite slow and reluctant to make the most of that flexibility, so not really engaged with competitive, flexible procedures as of yet. I think there is an uptick more recently. So that's kind of one of the areas where authorities have probably been reluctant to engage with the act at the moment. But that said, as I said, authorities are now absolutely starting to engage with that. And that's one of the things I have enjoyed so far. And the actors being able to work with clients and advise clients on how they do design their procedures to best achieve their outcomes. And. And embracing that flexibility they now do have with some clients have had to kind of rein them in a bit. They've wanted to do everything with their procedures. They wanted to have a down selection, a initial stage, a negotiation, dialogue, presentation, all within the same procurement and have A well, that's all great, but what are you trying to achieve? So that's great to see the ambition and the want to embrace that flexibility, but I guess it's striking the balance of making sure they're doing the right thing to achieve their desired outcomes. Another area I guess I've seen more recently is, and again, it flows from the want to exercise that greater flexibility is the use of presentations and interviews and demonstrations or just a general chat as part of the procurement process. And again, it's allowable, but it's doing it in the right way and avoiding the risks of that. So yeah, I've seen some authorities trying to grapple as to whether they do that and if they do that, how they do that. Another challenge I've seen is documentation what needs to be issued and when. So advising clients on at which stage of the process they absolutely do need to publish documents or whether they can keep things back to a later stage. So that's something that they're grappling with. And I guess one of the biggest areas that authorities are grappling with are notices. So the increased transparency requirements of the act and the various notices that need to be published throughout the lifecycle of not only the procurement but also the contract management, there's still kind of a nervousness or a lack of confidence as to which notices need to be published, when or even where the publishers notices actually need to be published at all. The vast number of notices is absolutely problematic and when you couple that up with kind of lack of capacity, I guess in public sector bodies especially, that is causing a headache with authorities. And we're only getting to a stage now where some of the latter notices are actually being triggered as well. So that's a problem in itself. And I guess as I touched on just now, capacity to do this properly is always an issue, has been an issue and still remains to be an issue. It'd be, I guess in an ideal world there would be reams and reams of people who could, could do this and deliver the benefits of the act to its full extent. But the reality is the, the number of people and the skill sets of people in the majority of contracting authorities are simply not there to deliver the act to its full potential. So those are some of the challenges I've seen. Some are bedding down, some are kind of still a bit grayer, but yeah, but that's what we're here to do. We're there to help support the challenges and help authorities get through them. So good to hear that insight, Tomas. Thank you so much because it really, I think it's quite a temperature check for us at quite a good time actually, because obviously having been talking about the act in the run up to it actually coming into force and now obviously that it is in play to sort of get the different perspectives on it. And from your angle as a legal advisor, really great insight and valuable to hear. So thanks for that. If we turn to perhaps a more Wales focus, obviously, Atomis, the power and Procurement is brought to everybody by atomas. It's based in Wales as a company. So for Wales based public procurement teams, before Christmas, the Social Partnership and Public Procurement Wales Act 2023 came in, didn't it? I mean, tell us a bit about that in terms of what the legislation entails and. Yeah, what it means here in Wales. Yeah, there's a lot to unpack here, so it's going to be a whistle stop tour. So let's put our feet belts on and let's go, I guess. So the who, what and when? So there's social partnership and public procurement. Every time I say that I've got to count the P's to make sure I've covered all three P. So yeah, it will apply to contracting authorities, which is a familiar term in procurement law, but under the SPPPA has a slightly different definition. So it will apply to certain Welsh authorities, but not all contracting authorities under the Procurement Act. So that's a starting point. There's the same term, different meaning. So whilst it will apply to a large number of Welsh authorities, not necessarily all authorities. So that's the who, the what. So there's a few things it does. I guess the starting point is it introduces a general overarching duty for those public bodies to carry out public procurement in a socially responsible way so as to improve the economic, social, environmental and cultural well being of its area. How does it do that? It does that by taking action in accordance with the Sustainable Development Principle, which is set up in the Wellbeing of Future Generations act, which means acting in a manner to ensure that the needs of the present are met without compromising the ability of future generation to meet their own needs. And that's done with an aim of contributing to the achievement of wellbeing goals listed in the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act. So that's ensuring a prosperous whales, resilient whales, healthier whales, a more equal Wales, a Wales of cohesive communities, a Wales of vibrant culture and thriving Welsh language, and a globally responsible Wales. So I guess the starting point is public procurement is to be used as a tool in Wales to achieve that. So a large number of the authorities to whom this will apply are already subject to the well Being of Future Generations Act. But a number of authorities, this will be probably the first time they are under an active duty to consider these things. So I guess that's the starting point, that's the overarching duty. But beyond that, then there are specific obligations on those contracting authorities as well to help support the overarching duty. So first of all, there's a duty to set socially responsible procurement objectives. So authorities will have to have objectives in mind which they will seek to achieve when undertaking public procurement. In relation to certain contracts, they have to take reasonable steps to meet those socially responsible human objectives. So you're above threshold contracts and construction contracts over £2 million and all outsourcing contracts, there'll be an obligation for them to achieve those objectives. In relation to construction contracts with a value of £2 million or more, there are specific obligations. They are largely an obligation to have regard to including model construction clauses in those contracts. Not an absolute obligation, but they have to consider where possible to include those. And if they don't include those clauses, they've got to report to OSH government as to why they haven't done so. Those clauses drive towards prompt payment, use of project bank accounts and retention bank accounts, opportunities for employment, compliance with employment, health and safety and trade union representation, providing appropriate training to their workers, providing opportunities to SMEs and VCSEs in the supply chain as well as environmental issues. So all kind of good stuff and trying to drive good behaviour in that regard. Something very similar in relation to outsourcing contracts as well. Same kind of concept, slightly different theme I guess in relations outsourcing contracts, both where the authority outsourcing services or are insourcing services back into the authority, they'll have to have regard to a workforce code which has been or will be published in final form, which includes an obligation to similarly have regard to including model clauses as well. So essentially it's to avoid a two tier workforce where public services are either outsourced or in sourced back to the authority. Yeah, and again, the model clauses drive towards certain behaviour about ensuring staff who are transferred with that service are not disadvantaged, ensuring other staff who also deliver that service are not treated unfavourably. Yeah, I said it's also including those model clauses and not only the main contract, but also the subcontract and down the supply chain. In addition to that, authorities will also have to prepare and publish their procurement strategies. So they'll have to tell the world essentially how they intend on delivering socially responsible procurement. So there'll be some transparency and a way of measuring how they go about doing that. In addition to that, they also have to publish annual reports detailing how they've gone about public procurement in the previous year, what steps it has taken to undertake socially responsible procurement, what further steps they think he may be able to take. And interestingly, there'll be some metrics in that report as well as to the proportion of contractors that fall into certain categories they were awarded public contracts to in the prior year. That includes information such as contractors who allow the use or the opportunity to learn and improve Welsh language skills, whether the contract is based in Wales, whether they're an SME, whether a living wage employer or have net zero contracts. So there'll be some metrics and data that we can look at to see who's actually been awarded. So there'll be much more transparency and information out there as well in the annual reports, as well as the Contracts Register, which the authorities will also have to maintain and publish. And that will include details of all live contracts with a value of more than £30,000. So there's a lot to unpack there, a lot of obligations coming in. Welsh government will also have a duty to publish annual reports and Welsh Government will also be able to investigate contracting authority's compliance with espppa. So unlike the Procurement act, where there's a right to challenge for suppliers under the actual, that doesn't apply under the spppa. That said, suppliers and individuals may try to judiciary decisions, but the main kind of area of scrutiny or direction of scrutiny will come from Welsh government towards contracting authority. So I guess the final point is when does all this happen? So the majority of the provisions will come into Force on 26 March, with some of the annual reporting coming in on in place from the 1st of April 2026. All right, well, thank you for that. I mean, you've taken us. I know you said whistle stop tour a lot to get through. We really appreciate you touching on it all. I mean, you said, obviously, in terms of when it's coming in, are you getting any response from clients at the moment regarding it? Yeah, so it's been keeping us busy over the last few months. So, as you say, it was announced in December that this would come into force in March and April. So there's been some clients have been taking action to be prepared for March and April. So that's. I've been involved with clients over the last few months. And yeah, there's a range of preparedness. As I touched on earlier, some. Some of the organizations will already be embedded in the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act. This won't be new to them. A lot of clients are probably already doing it in their procurements. On the other kind of side of the dial, some authorities, this will be completely new to them, especially the authorities who will be caught by this. But not necessarily experienced procurement entities, I guess they don't regularly procure above threshold contracts, so this will all be relatively new to them. So there is a mixture of readiness. I guess it's also the case this is another layer on top of the recent reform of the Procurement Act. So authorities are just only finding their feet into the act and this has come along some 12 months later. So it's another layer which doesn't dovetail to some extent with the Procurement Act. So yeah, the authorities have already spent a lot of time and resource kind of getting ready for the Procurement act and are now getting ready for the SPPA as well. So yeah, so again, have enjoyed working with clients and will be working with clients over the next few months to again face the challenges that implementation of any new piece of law brings. And I guess this is where we sort of really see the collaboration between legal and procurement, isn't it? Because you can really help alleviate any anxiety that there is around upcoming changes for different sectors and for different clients. Yeah, I guess it goes to the saying, a problem shared is a problem halved. I guess you speak to an external advisor, we can share the pain or share the opportunity in any change of law. Yeah, I would always advocate for early input from lawyers, whether it's kind of a new law or a new procurement. I guess the cynics out there will say, well, of course you'd say that, wouldn't you? But as a firm in particular, we enjoy working with our clients. We don't see ourselves as a kind of external legal advisor. We want to be or want to be seen as a kind of extension of their teams. I want to help them implement things and overcome their challenges. So yeah, that's the way we find ourselves or want to be seen as a natural extension of our clients teams. Yeah. And just taking a sort of different tack now in terms of perhaps procurement, you know, as a sector, as an industry. I mean, sometimes, I mean, it's come up sometimes on the podcast that it can be accused of slowing processes down, when in fact what we've heard a lot of on the podcast is actually it can help speed up processes if they're involved right from the start. So what advice would you give to procurement professionals on balancing the legal risk without slowing down the process? Yeah, it's a criticism you routinely see, and I think that's a really unfair criticism, and it's absolutely not the case. And as you say, it's usually quite the opposite. Getting your procurement officers involved and. Or getting your procurement lawyers involved at the very early stage usually means your overall program is usually quicker, better, less likely to lead to challenges later down the line. And that's where the delay usually happens, is you get to challenge, you evaluate your award and then a challenge blows up and it just puts a pause on everything at a very late stage and at a stage where you can't quickly rewind things. So, absolutely. Getting the right people involved at the very early stage, because those procurement officers or procurement lawyers will know where the problems lie. A fresh peervisor, a fresh input into the process and the documents as well, will spot where things can go wrong, spot the issues. They can be fixed at a very early stage, which means you actually avoid the issue and the risk altogether and avoid the latter delay which may arise as a result of that. Yeah. Speaking to even. Yeah, even speaking to colleagues this morning on various issues that clients are facing at the moment, they're facing challenges towards the end of the process, where, had they got the right people involved at the very start, they would have completely spotted that and avoided it altogether. So whilst I can see, rightly or wrongly, people think it's a delay at the start, it's slower at the start in the grand scheme of things, it's absolutely not. It's ensuring that the process runs as it should do and avoiding the risks at the latter stage. Good advice there. Thank you. Let's go to a hot topic of the moment. AI. It's already been used, isn't it? Drafting specifications, evaluating evaluation criteria. So what opportunities do you see really here for AI? And I guess as a lawyer, you're always thinking about risks. So in terms of, you know, where do the risks lie for clients and contracting authorities, from a legal standpoint, while there are obviously opportunities as well. Yeah, as you say, there's opportunities and risks for AI, and that's a general point beyond procurement law. Used in the right way absolutely has its benefits, but used in the wrong way absolutely comes with risks. So I guess it can be potentially used kind of across the lifecycle of procurement. So with the generating of tender documents. Yeah, absolutely. AI can probably generate the tender documents and is maybe a starting point when appropriate. I guess the. Again, the general principles apply. It's not going to replace human input. It may get things quite wrong in the sense that it may be generic or biased and not get across what the authority wants the tender documents to get across. So that the tender specification, it may be generic, not specific to what the authority wants, and may result in the authority getting something quite drastically different to what it actually sought. It wanted to have hud, someone drafted it itself or you started it or had a review with the specification, they tend the documentation with the award criteria. It's really only a human being who can really understand what the authority wants to prioritize as award criteria and methodology and how it wants to score. And whilst AI may be a starting point to that, I think that needs, absolutely needs human input and it's really only a human who can decide, well, what should the process look like and what are we trying to achieve from that? So I guess that's the early stage of a tender. Then the next stage where AI may come in is the kind of responses to tenders. And we've seen this with clients and I've spoken to a number of clients about this. Again, there's a place for AI in responding to tenders for suppliers responding to tenders, but again, great care has to be taken. I've spoken to more than one client where they've issued their tender documents and they've had a handful of tender replies back and a number of them are more or less exactly the same. It makes it difficult for the authority, then, for a number of reasons, it probably doesn't reflect what this player can do or what the supplier wants to be able to do. Makes it diffusion difficult to differentiate between suppliers and to apply the award kind of criteria to those tenders. And I guess the main issue is what authorities want to see from tender responses is how the supplier is going to deliver the contract, how is that supplier in particular going to deliver that contract, not how some AI thinks it's going to deliver the contract on a very generic basis. Yeah, for the want of a better word, kind of getting AI slot back as a tender response does no good for anyone, especially suppliers, because. And in my particular experience using AI to respond to things, it will be positively biased. I guess it will try to paint things in the best picture and I suspect allowing an AI to respond to a tender will kind of promise the world, promise things that the contractor will never be able to do. And if they are successful in that tender, they're bound to their tender response and have to deliver what they said they would or what the AI said they would. So that has kind of a risk of causing risk at a later stage doing contract management. The AI said, well, we'll do it this way. And the contractor said, well, we were never going to be able to do that or that that's what you promised he would do. So there are risks there. Again, the AI has a place to play in that, I guess, as a starting point and has to be kind of overseen by a human. The procurement notices say, okay, there shouldn't be a prohibition in using AI, and there shouldn't be a scoring or a disadvantage because they have used AI, but it has to be carefully managed, I guess. And then I think the final stage where AI possibly has a part to play is the evaluation of tenders. So I have no doubts that AI could be used to for authorities to input the tender documents and input the tender responses and ask the AI to evaluate that. However, I think it's this area where the most risk would arise, mainly because AI can't really explain how we got to certain decisions. I guess there's a black box thinking behind the algorithm. It's very difficult to explain, well, where did he get that? How did he get to that outcome where with human individuals, they will always be able to explain? Well, this is why I scored an 8 out of 10 for this question where AI may not be able to do that, or if it does, it may be again doing it on a bias basis. It's been trained on a certain set of data which leads it to a certain outcome. You can't drag AI into a witness box in a high court in front of a judge either. So if there are challenges and you can't explain what happened, you're on a very sticky wicket in that extent. So, yeah, I think it has a part to play. Like most things in life, AI is here to stay, has a part to play, but I think it just needs to be carefully managed by both authorities and suppliers alike. Well, we're really drawing towards the close of the podcast to get some key final thoughts in from you. And the first final thought is actually a looking ahead one. So in terms of a successful 2026 for you, what's that going to look like? I guess looking back at the projects we have been involved in and will be involved with, and being able to see that those got through the procurement process are starting to be implemented, are in fruition, and are really having a positive impact on public services and public life. Yeah, being able to, as I said, at the very start of the podcast. That's the thing that kind of brings me most satisfaction for my job is seeing the positive impact on the projects we've worked on. So yeah, being able to look back at those projects coming to life, I guess would be a good sign. Seeing clients being a bit more confident in what they're doing as well. Through our support and guidance and advice. Being able to help them through that journey and seeing them, I guess, flourish and being confident in what they're doing again, that's something which would mean 2026 would have been successful for us. So yeah, I guess looking back and seeing development and positive signs, I guess would be a good sign. Well, Thomas, thank you so much for being our guest on this episode of Powering Procurement. It's been wonderful to chat with you, some brilliant insights and advice and obviously an awful lot going on and a lot lying ahead of you as well. So good luck with everything. If everybody's enjoyed this episode, I'm sure they will have and learned an awful lot. Then we've got plenty more episodes of Powering Procurement for you to tune into. Don't forget to follow us as well and share with your colleagues in the procurement sector, but thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on Powering Procurement. That wraps up this episode of Powering Procurement. We hope you enjoyed that as much as we did. Visit our website website at Atomist Co UK or follow us on LinkedIn to continue the conversation. Remember to subscribe on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you choose to listen. Thanks for joining us and see you next time on Powering Procurement.