Award for Excellence in Public Procurement & Best Practice Award

The Excellence in Public Procurement and Best Practices Awards Program was established to recognize agencies that meet/exceed benchmarks and best practices in the Procurement Profession. Each year your Entity Awards Committee reviews the program and revises the application’s criteria to ensure that it reflects the current benchmarks and best practices; and encourages our members to keep improving within their organizations/agencies. In 2023, we presented 24 Entity Awards and 3 Best Practices Awards to member agencies.  Best practice award winners normally make a presentation to the full membership at the Florida Association of Public Procurement Officials, Inc. Spring Conference and share their successes with their colleagues. The 2024 application will span the period from January 1, 2023 through February 22, 2024.

Sincerely,

Keith K. Glatz, NIGP-CPP, CPPO

******IMPORTANT INSTRUCTIONS***** PLEASE READ BEFORE PROCEEDING ANY FURTHER IN THE APPLICATION PROCESS! ******************************************************

The “Login” box shown on this page may ONLY be used once you have established an account for entering an application.  (A separate account is required since the software used to prepare your submittal resides on the server of the firm that is providing the electronic application service to FAPPO.)

Please click on the link below titled “Click here to enter”, which will take you to page where you will be able to establish your account.  Fill-out your agency information and create your password under the column titled “Create a New Account”.  (Please note that the fields are case sensitive.) Once you have filled-in all of the appropriate information, click-on the “Register” key, and you will then be able to begin preparing your application. 

Once you log-out, you will need to go back to the Awards/Award of Excellence page, and use your new credentials for future logins.  Each user in your agency should also follow the same process if they plan to have access to the system.  

Application Process

The application process is now completely automated, and is currently available to FAPPO members by clicking the link shown below.  Members wishing to submit an application must use the on-line form, which provides users with the ability to upload documentation directly for each individual question on the application.  All submittals must be received electronically through the FAPPO web-site and are due by no later than 5:00 P.M. on February 22, 2024. For questions about the content, contact Mr. Keith K. Glatz, NIGP-CPP, CPPO, Purchasing & Contracts Manager, City of Tamarac, Phone: (954) 597-3567, E-mail: keith.glatz@tamarac.org.  

Click here to enter.

User Account:  Before beginning, you will need to create an account with a User ID and password for each agency if you do not already have one from a previous year’s entry.  Please use your User ID and password from your previous application if you have one.  You may re-register for a new User ID and password if there has a been a change in staff at your agency. 

Starting the Application:

You may apply for the Award of Excellence and/or the Best Practice Award. Please be sure to select the category (Award of Excellence or Best Practice).  If you wish to apply for both awards, you will need to select the Award of Excellence category first, complete the agency information screen, select the “Save and Next” button, and complete the questions, and upload your documentation.

The program allows you to fill-in common agency information for both the Award of Excellence and the Best Practice Awards.  You will then be taken to the home page for the best practice application.  Once there, scroll down to the “Let’s Get Started” section where you will be prompted to select a category.  If you wish to submit an application for the Award of Excellence, choose “Award of Excellence” in the drop-down menu, or “Best Practices” for a Best Practice Award.  If you choose “Award of Excellence”, you will then be prompted through the questions on the application.

Should you wish to apply for a Best Practices award in addition to an Award of Excellence application, once you complete the “Award of Excellence” application, you will need to go back and select the Best Practice category. (In the event that you only wish to complete a Best Practices application, you may select the “Best Practices” option, which will take you directly to the Best Practices award application.) You will need to select the category that you want to apply for from the available selections for the “Cost Savings” category, the “Contribution to the Profession” category or the “Innovation” category.  You may only make one (1) selection.  You will then need to complete your general agency information if it is not already saved, and scroll to the bottom of the page to click on the “Save and Next” button to move to the Best Practice application/upload. The judges reserve the right to move your application to a different category after their evaluation.

Membership Participation Credits (MPC):  Entities will be eligible to receive a maximum of $150 Membership Participation Credits for submitting a successful entity award application or for winning one (1) of three (3) awards for a Best Practice essay submittal (No more than one (1) Best Practice essay entry will be considered). MPC points will ONLY be awarded for one entry, and agencies will not be eligible to receive points for both an Entity Award submittal and a Best Practice essay submittal.  Points will be awarded to the first successful entry scored per agency, whether it be an Entity Award submittal or a Best Practice essay.  IF an individual has already received $150 MPC award points, that individual will not be eligible to receive the $150 points awarded, however, they may allow another agency representative with no other points to receive and redeem the points. Membership Participation Credits MUST be redeemed for the 2024 FAPPO Conference for either registration OR lodging, and will not be transferable to future conferences or other programs. 

Here are some helpful tips that will help you with the submittal of your award application:

Tip #1 – Our software does not run well on Internet Explorer.  Please use either Chrome, FireFox or some other browser to prepare your application to insure smooth operation.

Tip #2 – Be sure to fill-out your agency information before you begin to answer questions.  Once you finish that, you may select “SAVE” or “SAVE AND NEXT”, which will take you to the first page of the form.

Tip #3 – If you are answering questions on the Award of Excellence form, and do not immediately see a box to add a URL or a “BROWSE” box to upload your documentation, don’t fear!  The program is designed so the URL or “BROWSE” upload box ONLY appears after you answer “YES” to a question.  Once you select “YES”, the appropriate box will appear immediately below for that question only!  If no boxes appear, then you have completely answered the question.

Tip #4 – Try to restrict file size of the uploads to 25 MB.  As a means to save space, you may wish to use techniques such as converting a color file to a black and white file to upload. If you have Adobe writer software, you can “Optimize” or  “Enhance” the scanned file, depending on your version of Adobe Writer.

Tip #5 – When entering a URL for a web-site, please do NOT enter a URL from an internal Intranet web-site URL.  The judges will not be able to access your internal Intranet web-site.  Please ONLY provide URL’s from publicly accessible Internet web-sites!

Tip #6 – If you are submitting both an Award of Excellence application, and also wish to submit a Best Practice as well, you will need to return to the page where you provided your agency information.  Under the “Let’s Get Started” section, where you chose your original Category (either Award of Excellence or Best Practice), click on the blue link “Add Another Category”.  Once you have done that, select the application that you want to work on next.  Normally, agencies start the Award of Excellence Application first, and then begin the Best Practice application process.  You may start the Best Practice application anytime after you begin the Award of Excellence application.  The application just needs to be started to add the other category.  Of course, you may still just enter an Award of Excellence or Best Practices Application ONLY if you wish.