1:00 PM - 2:00 PM Eastern
1 PM - 2 PM ET
Virtual Event
Registration closes March 25, 2026
Join us for OPBA's weekly educational series celebrating March Procurement Month!
This is week 4 in our 4-part series | Free to OPBA Members
Melissa Jackson and Jamie Cook will share practical insights on how Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs) can be used—alongside traditional procurement approaches—to support capital planning, budget development, project financing, and delivery across municipal and broader public sector environments.
The session will be grounded in real-life procurement experience, drawing on Melissa’s former role in a publicly funded hospital, where she was responsible for long-term capital planning and working directly with internal stakeholders to deliver capital and infrastructure projects within strict funding timelines and governance requirements. This practitioner perspective will be used to illustrate how procurement teams assess options, manage risk, and make policy-compliant decisions in complex public sector settings.
Topics will include:
- How public agencies align capital plans, funding approvals, and procurement strategies
- Practical considerations for deciding when to use traditional competitive processes versus existing collaborative purchasing arrangements, including GPOs
- Using market intelligence and budgetary pricing to support business cases and approvals by councils, boards, or senior leadership
- Managing cost certainty, scope changes, and delivery risks through pre-established pricing frameworks while maintaining transparency and accountability
- How different project delivery models interact with procurement strategy and funding constraints
This session is intended to provide an objective, experience-based perspective to help public procurement professionals understand how GPOs may fit within their organization’s policies and governance frameworks, using real-world examples rather than theory.
PRESENTERS:Melissa Jackson - Director of Healthcare, Business Development
Kinetic GPO
Melissa Jackson is the National Director of Healthcare on the Business Development Team with Kinetic GPO. Melissa has been with Kinetic for 4 years, with over a decade of Public Procurement experience. Most recently, she was a Contract Specialist for a Shared Service Organization and providing Procurement & Project Management services for a Hospital. She has a passion for creating efficiencies and value for Healthcare Organizations, while supporting Supplier relationships and encouraging collaboration.
Jamie Cook, Arch. Dipl. - National Project Director, Healthcare
Colliers Project Leaders
Jamie Cook is a skilled Project Director with over 20 years of experience delivering project management, space planning and functional programming services within the healthcare sector. Since joining Colliers Project Leaders, she has led several functional programming projects for a wide variety of our firm’s public and private sector clients. Jamie has experience leading small and large functional programming, space planning, estimating, project management, and construction management assignments. She has applied her leadership experience and evidence-based research to support a variety of healthcare and government institutions to develop space standards or apply existing standards for many multi-disciplinary departments
Registration Fees
|
Title |
Fee |
Member Status |
Points |
CEUs |
Hours |
|
Members |
$00.00 + HST |
Members Only |
0.0000 |
0.0000 |
1.00 |
|
Non Members |
$35.00 + HST |
All Registrants |
0.0000 |
0.0000 |
1.00 |
Please refer to our refund + payment policy for information regarding cancelations and/or refunds.
| 3/26/2026 |    |