Marta Andhov  0:00  

Welcome to Bestek, the Public Procurement Podcast. Today, we will be discussing societal challenges and interdisciplinary work in public procurement.

About Bestek  0:16  

Welcome to Bestek, the public procurement podcast. In this podcast, Dr. Willem Janssen and Dr. Marta Andhov discuss public procurement law issues, their love of food, and academic life. In each episode, Willem, Marta, and their guests search for answers to intriguing public procurement questions. This is Bestek. Let’s dish off public procurement law. 

Marta Andhov  0:40  

Hello?

Willem Janssen  0:43  

That hello kind of sounded like you were wondering if someone was at the other end of the line. I really appreciate that. But good to talk again. Good. It’s me. Really good to talk again and to get a bit nerdy about procurement law today. 

Willem Janssen  1:01  

But I think before we do that, I think you have a small announcement. 

Marta Andhov  1:05  

Yeah, we’re making it very formal.

Willem Janssen  1:11  

But wait, that’s like, really cool news, right? So I felt like it deserved a bit of a drum roll. And like…

Marta Andhov  1:17  

Before we do anything else…

Willem Janssen  1:19  

…moving across the globe. 

Marta Andhov  1:22  

That’s true. Maybe let’s just tie it also a little bit with our work on podcast, as maybe some of our listeners noticed over the last year. Or maybe it’s already true, the scheduling of our podcast how regular we are about it, and our diligence have been changing because, as we already shared on the podcast a couple of times, this is a labor of great friendship, and it’s a bit our pet project. If we can say that we really like doing this, but it’s something in addition to our day-to-day obligations and as Willems family grows, and I’ve been moving around a little bit already, around the world on some research stays, and we, right now, as a team, also embark on a new challenge, which would be on a more permanent basis. We would need to work across different time zones because that is true from the next month. Well, depending, yeah, I guess from October. Let’s just say it that way, because we don’t know when we will publish the podcast, but from October, I will be affiliated with the University of Auckland in New Zealand, which also means that we actually are recording this episode where I’m already not in Copenhagen, but not yet in Auckland, so somewhere in transition, so to speak, moment on my way to Auckland, but yeah, very exciting news. I’ll be starting a new job. It will be a combination of a position between a law school and a business school. So also quite fitted to what we want to discuss today. A bit on interdisciplinary work, on how that works, but yeah, exciting. We might be recording podcasts at three o’clock in the morning of my time or Willem’s time. So be ready for if you didn’t think that we were getting a bit goofy that might increase substantially going forward, I guess. 

Willem Janssen  3:26  

Well, first, first off, massive congratulations. I think it sounds really cool, and I think it also ties in a lot with the work that you’ve been doing. And we’ll get to that in a bit really looking at the commercial side of procurement and contracting and those types of things. So I think that joint position really makes it very exciting. So and two, I mean, I’m up with a baby all night anyway, so I figured if I’m up anyway, then I might as well do the night shifts with the baby in my hands. It might not, I’m not sure if that’s going to increase the quality of the recording, but we will figure it out.

Marta Andhov  3:57  

I might have rain doing some sound side effects in the background.

Willem Janssen  4:01  

Yeah, yeah. Not food as a theme anymore, or mains or desserts like baby bottles… Anyway, before we lose track again, congratulations. Really cool. And I’m sure we’ll manage to make it work across time zones, even though we might be 8 to 10 hours apart sometimes.

Marta Andhov  4:20  

Should I set the time, right now? But it’s between 10 to 12 or?

Willem Janssen  4:25  

Oh, wait, I’ve got Australia in my head. Let’s just make it let’s just make it Australia. Then let’s do New Zealand, but we’ll do Australia. That’s far more palatable. But anyways, back to the…

Marta Andhov  4:35  

Back to the podcast. Yeah. So I just, yeah, we wanted to share those news also with you, because some of the listeners are with us for some time, so you feel, it very much engages our broader community. But that also ties, as we said, a little bit, with the topic of today’s podcast, where we want, for our main to discuss societal challenges and interdisciplinary work in public procurement. And then we would tie to it, also looking at the same topic, more from an educational perspective and perspective of for and… For the purpose of our students in our dessert section. So just in case, it may be we have some listeners that are joining us relatively new recently, or maybe just did not hear at any point, one of the first episodes where we actually addressed what is this idea between The Main and Dessert. Very brief catch-up on what that is. We really structure our podcast in a way that we want to spend majority of time on substantial analytical aspects of public procurement. And this is imitating a discussion that we would have over dinner, maybe or not, a conference, an academic conference. We often reflect on the fact that that’s where the most unfiltered and kind of cool, inspiring conversations take place, and dessert is usually where we talk about something that has been relevant to us in our academic lives. If that is a little bit of a perspective of mentorship in case, we have some younger colleagues listening, or a bit of perspective rule, you know, transition growing to different positions, different roles in the academic world, or just being part of the academic community, and what are some of the challenges that we, that we face. That’s just a very brief update, but I would now let Willem map a little bit a source of this topic, or where we want to or why we want to even talk about our perspective, we would want to dive into why it is relevant, why this is something that we want to talk about. 

Willem Janssen  6:47  

Yeah, so I feel like this. This topic came up in my head, mostly because I sometimes feel like I’m different. I’m a multiple type of person. I’m not going to say personality, but I act differently in different roles. Let’s put it that way. And what I mean by that is, sometimes I feel like an absolute public procurement law nerd who works very mono-disciplinarily on one single issue. Say what I did with my PhD. I looked at article 12 in the directive, the classic directive. I went to town on it. Wrote 353, pages on it, and it was really this procurement geeky type of stuff, fantastic, very mono-disciplinary, and because of the context that I’m in at Utrecht University and also Groningen University, but let me single out Utrecht, it also means that I work a lot with different type of scholarship. So within the Center for Public Procurement, I work with mostly economists, but also geoscientists and people from public administration, and that’s also a bit of how research is set up at Utrecht, we’re stimulated to move beyond the borders of our own disciplines and to really move beyond those borders into other sciences, and that’s arranged through institutional themes at the university, say, pathways to sustainability, institutions for open societies, that’s where I meet up with other disciplines. And there are two feelings that I get when I think about that context. It’s so much fun, and it’s so difficult, and that’s why I thought, because of those two things, let’s talk about it a bit, and let’s see what that brings us because I do think there’s a lot of value in it, right, in working across disciplines, mostly to tackle those societal challenges. That you introduced in the title of this episode, it, I think, starts with an understanding of knowing that you can’t do it alone in your discipline by looking solely at the workings of that specific provision, like I did in my PhD, I’ve come to the understanding that that’s not going to solve the big issues of society today. So that’s a bit where I was at when I was cycling when the kids were down, and basically, I felt like, let’s talk about that with Marta. But I’m not sure if that’s the same in your context, or how that works in Copenhagen. Worked in Copenhagen, I should say.

Marta Andhov  9:16  

I think that you know, what you share, I very much echo the same sentiment. I think that we are also similarly structured very often. I think the projects today, particularly projects if you apply for any external funding. So this is where we really look on this, international collaborative projects that we’ve both been part of, several right now, if you look on EU funding, they are, I would say, predominantly interdisciplinary based. There is a real push, but also on national agencies in Copenhagen, the Danish financial support for academic projects is also very much underlying the need for multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research. So I think that we are also pushed towards doing that type of work from the perspective of, you know, incentive, right incentive, in context of funding and giving you different opportunities. And exactly as you said, I think it’s interesting at the same time, it’s very challenging. It’s extremely challenging. And I think that how challenging it is working for, you know, couple years right now, really on this big two projects that EU funded, I think that there is not enough really underlying and communication of how long it takes to work on things like that together. I think that when I reflect on interdisciplinary work, I sometimes have this reference, you know, we both have a lot of friends that you have a multicultural multinational couple and then you have babies that speak two or three languages. And I kind of reflected on that there is a certain similarity. So they also will start talking later, because there’s so much input, but then they are sort of catching up, and there is, for sure, added value and all that and all that, but I think it’s similar with interdisciplinary projects. It takes just so long to really figure out that we talking about the same thing. Or are we talking about actually two different things? And that already happens when you discuss issues within the discipline of law, but from different, you know, perspectives. So let’s say administrative law, constitutional law, and contract law, and there are already differences there. But when you are starting to talk also suddenly, to even economists about certain things, efficiency, I think that, you know, we both have interesting experiences over that. The way how we understand as lawyers, efficiency, and the way economists understand is very different. Similarly, what we think about as lawyers as compliance, is very different from what computational scientists and programmers think as compliance. And this is right now very topical. When you design all these different tools, sometimes even legal tools companies are to use, and you know they’re saying, Yeah, we are compliant. But if you actually work in the back end and are seeing how those things are being done. There’s no compliance. They just think that they need to out of the box saying, Are you compliant with this and that? You know, so I think it’s, it’s super hard, and I don’t know, ultimately. 

Marta Andhov  12:52  

So this is a question that I would be really interested to hear your perspective, whether it’s better for if that is a, you know, professional or an academic or a student, I don’t think that it matters that much, but is it a better way to first get specialized in one discipline and then do the crossover, or actually from the very beginning, if that is your educational professional experience, be exposed to different, so you learn from the beginning because I think that you know the challenge of one is that you might get too specialized too quickly, and you might have this problem of bridging the different disciplines. On the other hand side, I also worry that if you become too… cross-disciplinary from very early on, are you really becoming a specialist in anything that, if that makes sense, I wonder, because also you are leading an educational program right now that is interdisciplinary in its nature, right? Are those the type of conversations, that you are having when, you know, planning the program, when you are thinking about what you want the students to ultimately end up with?

Willem Janssen  14:04  

I mean, that’s, I think, a valid question. This is the first time I think Mata that we’re doing dessert and main mixed. I wonder how that would taste sweet and salty together. Let’s do it all together. It doesn’t matter. So I think one of the things that strikes me, because it’s a valid question, like, do you do it from the start, or do you become an expert first is, I think we’re very much trained to first become an expert in one thing, right? That’s because most PhDs are done, like, if you look at Academia, most PhDs are done in one discipline, right? Of course, there are exceptions, but I think they are the exceptions still. And to be honest, I don’t know if there’s a like, a specific, if I look solely at Academia, I don’t know if there’s if there’s one approach to it. What I think is vital, though, is whether you start in an interdisciplinary setting across legal disciplines or looking at other fields of science, I think what you really need to have is probably two things, to be successful in your I would say professional attitude is I would say you need to be humble. Humble in the sense that you realize that you just don’t know right? And that you don’t know, what the answer is yourself, and that you realize that your own approach or expertise is not going to be fully sufficient in answering those big questions. And I think on top of that, it requires a certain other than being comfortable with saying I don’t know what the full picture is. I think secondly is a certain openness and curiosity, right? And I think the difficulties that you just described, I think that they’re fully valid, but I think the way you overcome them in your projects, I think how I’ve always tried to tackle them is by being curious and by being open and really just asking questions about why? Like, what is your understanding of this specific topic? Like, what is the competition in your field? What does it mean for you as an economist to talk about competition, as opposed to us as procurement or competition lawyers? And I find that having that openness and curiosity on top of being humble, I think that’s really the key here, more than I think thinking about, do you start with it, or do you do it later? Right? I think, or at least, that’s my gut, my gut feeling.

Marta Andhov  16:48  

Well, I think that this is very interesting, because this ultimately ties, you know, back, if to take a step back is to really say, Okay, well, do we even have still today, in 2024, really, a type of, you know, mono-disciplinary work as an academic, right? Um, can I go through my career or you and really do solely law? Is that still, you know, a valid perspective? And I think that this, at least, if you think about the academic environment, talking to different colleagues across different European institutions, it seems that as we in general in political life and societal life, I think we’re a little bit on this journey of looking forward to more conservative times since couple years in general, I think that in academia, it is a little bit seen too, where there is opposition. I’ve definitely noticed a certain opposition towards cross-disciplinary interdisciplinary work, pointing out that, you know, there is enough work to be done within the law and I think that there was some argument into it. Because, you know, while we want to, if we look at the societal challenges as we worded it as a title for today, I don’t think that one discipline of any science can really address it. But when you go to more specific issues and issues of law, I do think that sometimes, when we really are on this projects or on this research that really, really digs into the law, and you really think about, okay, well, how the court would answer that, how you can solve some unclarity, or how you can fill out certain gaps. I do think that there are spaces in which we are the specialists and we are equipped and we are skilled and it’s also lots of fun, I think, for you to work within your field. So I think…

Willem Janssen  18:48  

Yeah. 

Marta Andhov  18:48  

You know, I wouldn’t say that there is no space for that anymore, but I do think that if we only work within that, we don’t learn… I simply think about, you know, communicational skills. I think you need to be able to talk, even in our case, then to contracting authorities or to suppliers, right in the context of procurement, and really show them the relevance of what we’re talking about, because it might be but I think that sometimes we really need this ivory towers, and you need to be able to repackage whatever the research is of really, then showing how this is of practical relevance?

Willem Janssen  19:28  

Yeah, no, I fully I also hear those discussions take place here at Utrecht or in Groningen. And I think there is, I think it’s partially also caused by the funding that you mentioned before, right? Because there is a certain push, particularly Dutch, academia is under Major pressure, right? We have a government which I’m very critical of, that wants to save 1 billion on higher education, even though we were already struggling. So the amount of funding is already going to drop. And I think maybe that will even only increase the focus on funding opportunities that are interdisciplinary because perhaps that’s the only thing that’s left. So I think the discussion about people that say or colleagues that say, well, there is also value to my monodisciplinary work. I fully agree.

Marta Andhov  20:18  

Absolutely.

Willem Janssen  20:19  

…fully agree. And I think there’s also one thing that we lawyers, what we struggle with, I think still two things in interdisciplinary work. I find that when you enter a consortia where you do the legal package, work package, or when you write a paper with another science often you’re seen as someone that will say, Is this allowed? So we will propose the good stuff, and you, Mr. Lawyer, or whoever you are, you will decide if it’s allowed, right? And I find that’s not my role, right? I’m not interested in that. If I would have been interested in that, only that question, right? I’m not saying it’s not part of my job at all. I would have become a practicing attorney.

Marta Andhov  21:04  

No, but I think that you’re right. That, very often, we are just a bit simplified, the role of law or legal science is a bit simplified to just a yes or no type of question.

Willem Janssen  21:18  

Yes or no. And I find that that kind of underestimates, I think, and perhaps it goes into more, broader discussions about the nature of legal research, right? But ultimately, I think that we should be invested also in what the world should look like, right? What should a frame, legal framework, look like, and for what reason? And I think that’s where legal innovation happens, right? That’s where we as legal scholars can make the difference, compared to, say, practicing attorneys, when we look at questions of incoherence, of legal effectiveness, and those types of things. And I find that that’s really something that hasn’t landed yet in other sciences when they work with us, unless you’ve worked with legal scholars for a long time well, or if I’ve yelled it at you a number of times, but I think there is a second bit to it, is that I think often we get, we accept that role too quickly, and I think pushing those boundaries and really noting that, you know, and I think that’s why I’m trying to say it, is this mono-disciplinary work that we do also has value in an interdisciplinary setting, as long as you maintain what you do in that mono disciplinary setting, and don’t move to saying yes or no, it’s allowed, right? But you really look at what the legal framework should look like or could look like, or how it could be enhanced, or where the issues are and what the analysis is. And I think that in many cases, that’s the first thing that I say when I approach when I get approached to be part of a consortium, is okay, well, how do you look at the legal sciences? Like, what do you what do you expect? And of course, we can have a discussion about it, but if the answer really is it’s only to say yes or no, I’m personally not really interested. 

Marta Andhov  23:02  

But I think also from my personal experience over the years, the challenge is that really to get a team that is able to conduct a really interesting detail and innovative research, this is not, you know, majority of these projects are funded for, let’s say, three years, five maybe years, and I do not think that this is enough. I do not think that this is enough because you know that those three years, it would just take you to really find a common language. And I think that the issue is really there because a lot of the interdisciplinary projects truly how they ultimately look. Yes, you got a consortium of different disciplines, but then you have different work packages, and you find yourself that you ultimately work with, you know, work package this, and you’re doing your own little bit, and then they somehow, or the more umbrella, you know, helicopter view perspective, someone will try to write some sort of concluding report how they tie those things. But this is not really interdisciplinary work. And this is also not to say that, you know, that this is a criticism, because, if that is, you know, the SAPIENS project, which you also have been included over the last years, you know, we try to really conduct if those are training and support 15 PhDs from different disciplines to talk about and analyze different aspects of sustainable public procurement. It’s extremely difficult. It’s extremely difficult because you undoubtedly going back to the point, you know, whether you really specialize straight away, or you become cross-disciplinary straight away. I do think that it’s timing because I do think that at the beginning if you straight away and go quite cross-disciplinary, you go horizontally, right? You you sort of building your vocabulary and your knowledge in a very broad sense, but it’s quite superficial knowledge. And then at some point, because it takes time, right? It just takes time. But I do think that whichever way we do it, two things that are ringing about, you know, following up on what you said. One is that maybe we just within law need to take more leading role, because usually consorts, yeah, we usually are partners that is, you know, somehow subordinate, somehow ad hoc, added. But you don’t really have, you rarely have these massive consortia where the legal discipline drives certain things, and then you have different disciplines, you know, adding into it. And it’s really also connected with what law is. You know, if we step away, I would say maybe, you know, something like constitutional law is something that has been really from the beginning, something that we use a lot for the purpose of building society right, but on everything else, well, you want to conduct a business, and then the law needs to facilitate and help you to do that right. You want to fight crimes, and what criminally, it has maybe the challenge also is that we are a tool to achieve goals in a certain way. But, yeah, but I think that we discuss right now, you know, this really, broadly, really important aspect of interdisciplinary work, similarly, as we tend to say, but we fly for collaboration. We don’t walk to other departments, right? But in similar way, I think we both collaborate right now within the discipline of law on the project that ultimately looks at the interaction of different laws together. So we are within the one discipline of law, and that already is quite complicated, right? And that’s already quite challenging, and you need to conduct these interpretive exercises and translate various concepts. And that’s a project we right now are in a third year of it, the second year, I think the second year of it, three workshops in. And I think we just concluded the last one, a couple of weeks ago, were we looking really on the interaction between civil law, more specifically, commercial contracts law and public procurement? And I think that it’s just right now, the three years that we all kind of getting on the same page, that we understand all as a collective of academics, kind of where our starting point is, and that’s a lot of time within the same discipline. I’m not sure whether, outside of this project, I imagine that you also have collaborations with other colleagues from the legal disciplines, whether you also see a similar challenge, or maybe it’s just this particular project that we run into.

Willem Janssen  27:49  

No, so, I mean, yeah, I fully, I see it here as well. So we have the Center for Regulation and Enforcement in Europe RENFORCE at the law school, and all of our centers are set up in that fashion. So there are criminologists, there are people from criminal law, private law, procurement law, and competition law, all joining forces to look at regulation and enforcement in Europe. And I see the same thing. And I think also reflecting on like because I think perhaps the issue is very similar, right? When the aspects that you mentioned on working on this great book project that you have coming from your Purple grant, looking at the relationship between contract law and procurement law, as you mentioned, or whether it’s the work that I do with economists and Public Procurement professionals in academia or public procurement academics at our economics department, I think you’re spot on when you say it’s length. You need time. You need a lot of time to be able to work together. And I find that on top of that, if I look at reflecting on all of those corporations, what I think has been what is essential, and then it’s still not. Sometimes I feel like, Are we there yet? But maybe we are, maybe we’re not, but I’ll let others be the judge of that. But I think it’s really about getting to know each other’s worlds. And that really starts with what conferences do you go to. Where’s your where’s your field of expertise? Where do they meet? What do you talk about? And what are friction points? What are the main topics in your field of expertise, whether that be like you say, contract law, or whether that be economics, I think those are vital questions. So really getting to know each other in what their world looks like because I think that helps you create a language together. And then the second one is, I think, and that’s easier if it’s within your own institution. I get that and harder in a project that you just mentioned, is to continuously share the… It is to not make it like, okay, let’s sit down and write, because that is, that’s just a recipe for disaster. But if you’re continuously so what we do is we have, like, talks, say Brown Bag meetings or lunches, whatever you would call them.

Marta Andhov  30:04  

Brown bag, that sounds a little…

Willem Janssen  30:07  

What?

Marta Andhov  30:08  

Brown bags?

Willem Janssen  30:08  

Yeah, but it’s from a…

Marta Andhov  30:10  

Yeah, I know, but it’s just, you know, the first thing that goes to my mind is, like American movies, when you have booze in brown bags, because you cannot drink in public.

Willem Janssen  30:19  

Oh, those would be fantastic. That would be a fantastic meeting. No, there are just sandwiches in those brown bags. 

Willem Janssen  30:27  

No, no, no. I think it’s about those meetings where we share progress, and then I look at amazing econometric, statistical work, and I really have to think about that me and being convinced of being open, and I don’t know, and those types of things, but I find that that’s where you find little links, right? When someone says, Oh, we found that a change in the law led to… so Vita’s work, which I discussed with him, a couple of episodes ago, is a change in the law had a great effect on the amount of bids, right? So going back and looking at that, what does that mean for legal reform, right? Those types of conversations, and really being there, whether it be at a coffee machine, rather than thinking that you can learn a language or learn to work with others and understanding their methods because that’s, I think, a last bit. It’s not just about terminology, but also, what does a research paper look like for you? What is, you know, what is a, what is a method that you would apply right where we would go for, say, a European legal method, or legal effectiveness or coherence or consistency, or any type of things that we could look at. I think that that is a definite aspect that also requires attention. When you talk about language, it’s really about definitions and methods. Once you get those down, I think you’ve come quite far.

Marta Andhov  31:49  

You know, the only other thing to conclude our discussion on this, that I would add, is that I also genuinely, really, but I think that in every workplace, collaborative work, you just need to find your people. And I also think in this, if you want to do something cross-disciplinary, or even within your own discipline. But already you know different branches, you need to find the right people. Because I think that this type of work requires two things. One is…

Willem Janssen  32:18  

Find a Dutch find guy, is that what you’re trying to say?

Marta Andhov  32:26  

I think… No don’t worry.

Willem Janssen  32:26  

When you start talking about brown bags…

Marta Andhov  32:27  

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Willem Janssen  32:28  

…with wine in them, I mean…

Marta Andhov  32:31  

Fair enough.

Marta Andhov  32:32  

I think that you know, we work very hard and for a very long to be, you know, taken seriously and to be specialized and expert in something. And this type of work always gets you outside of your comfort zone, because ultimately you expose yourself to say, I know a little bit, but there is a whole lot that I don’t know, and it’s sort of a bit of a shaky ground that we come into this collaboration. So I feel like you need to be open to this. And it’s getting out of our comfort zone. It’s not really something that people generally feel very you know good about. It’s a bit scary. It’s a bit uncomfortable. And the second thing is also that you need to have a certain layer of openness. And you already mentioned that, but you know, the openness also of trying and seeing other perspectives and sometimes concluding that actually, your way is not the right way, or not even that is, but even being open, that it might not be right that your perspective, just might not be this, instead of being open to doing those things? And, yeah, and, you know, this is, this is not anything controversial. I think there will be people that don’t feel comfortable under those circumstances. And this is not to say that they are, anyhow, less. They are just people that will be doing a fantastic job within monodisciplinary work, within being, you know, very, let’s say, dogmatical, legal research, conducting research of that type. And they will be great at this, because it’s also, I think, that the challenge has been that it’s being solved mainly because of the funding, probably, but something that we all need to do, and I don’t know, you know…

Willem Janssen  34:11  

Yeah,  no, and I think also maybe to add one more thing that I was thinking about as well. We didn’t really talk about what we see in the language that we’re speaking now, is, what does interdisciplinary work mean for us? Right? Maybe just a quick thought on that is, I think to me when you take insights from another discipline or another legal science, you don’t do anything with them. You just take them as a given right. You describe them, this is what they found, and then you use that to inspire your own legal research in many Dutch educational documents. That’s already seen as interdisciplinary, right? Whereas the next step would be, is that you start integrating, right? Is that you really work together and you really, you set up the research together, rather than simply borrowing. And maybe you integrate methods, maybe you integrate definitions, and I think so also to make it sound less because I feel like we’ve talked a lot about how difficult approaches it is, but what I find is maybe also a way of like loosening up the debate a bit is also to say, well, you know, this is already interdisciplinary, right? You’re working you’re borrowing from other sciences to reflect on your own, instead of having to fully flesh integrate with another scientist. Have a co-author, double-blind, peer-reviewed, high-rank journal publication, because it’s so fantastic because you’ve integrated, right? So I think that perhaps can alleviate some of it. And then I’ll close, and then, of course, you always have the last word in this, Marta, is, I think it is, and that’s the most important thing that I’ll say. Perhaps, what I think is the most important thing is that it is a lot of fun. It really drives me and it really makes me frustrated at times. But in the end, I think the end results, when you’ve really worked together and you’ve found greater solutions, I think that’s what’s really like. It’s so much fun. And I think so if anyone needs the pep talk, this was the pep talk to get going on it.

Marta Andhov  36:07  

I think that, you know, it’s also everything that is of value is difficult, and I think that this is something that needs to be, at least, in my personal opinion, repeated and sort of put on there, on the canvas of the discussion more open, right? Like everything that is difficult, that has everything that is worth of something achieving, reading, you know, let’s be honest, it’s solving climate change would be one discipline thing and straightforward thing. We wouldn’t be struggling with it all the big, massive things required everyone to find a way. 

Marta Andhov  36:45  

We are rounding up our episode here, but I would want us to touch on the dessert as Willem mentioned, we already weaved it in as we were talking about students. But if you were to think a little bit about, you know, one paragraph of shorter thought, why, how you would… do you address anyhow, when you are studying, teaching, when is the start of the program? Is the interdisciplinary is something that you actually actively address to your students, or it’s just something that sort of is in the background, and if you do address it, you know, if you could maybe share with us how you are showcasing the value, what will be some of the important things for the students.

Willem Janssen  37:28  

So in any of the courses that I teach, I really try to start with this in the opening lecture, when I sketch the landscape of what does procurement look like, and what do we need to make procurement work effectively, right? Regulation is a part of it, laws and regulations, and I think particularly it comes to the fore throughout the course, even though you discuss, say, procurement based on lowest lifecycle costs, or you discuss things, based on labels or reserve procedures or anything like that, I think where the case law really is ultimately public procurement, right? It’s about contracting authorities that have made smart or not-so-smart choices about how they engage with the market. Did they use market consultations? How do they set up the procedure to stimulate competition? What type? How do they use transparency to their best advantage, to make sure that they got the most amount of good bids? Right? So I find that by continuously highlighting the fact that one, public procurement law regulates public procurement, and on top of that, in order to be able to integrate sustainability, we need knowledge about, how do you assess a life cycle, right? How do you go about that if you want to transplant it into an award criteria? So I find that those aspects, it’s, of course, law, for me is the is the little golden thread. But I find that every step of the way, you really need those other perspectives, for students to be fully able to understand all of these concepts that we discuss as lawyers, and for them to be able to implement them in practice. And I think that a final thing that I could say about it is I do think they need those interdisciplinary skills when they enter the workforce, whether that be in academia or whether that be in any type of legal, counseling, and consulting advisory roles. They need that because, one the business case or the governmental policy perspective always has those different perspectives in it. It’s never just in a vacuum.

Marta Andhov  39:29  

For sure, for sure. I think you know, from my perspective, I would just add that similarly as you, I would address it at the first introductory lecture of the course. And I usually will just say that you know ultimately we need to recognize. That procurement is not just law. Law is just part of the procurement, but there’s all business case and business side of procurement, public administration, you know, ethical finance, public spending, with public finance, all these different checks and balances. And the pod is also the students that we teach, the majority of them will be lawyers or judges and so on, but many of them also will be of some sort of legal background, but working, you know, in house and public administration or different companies, so also getting the understanding that you’re having a different set of skills, and understanding that, for example, a legally compliant public procurement does not necessarily mean that it’s a good public procurement procedure. Yeah, and I think that this is usually how I’m trying to always frame it, in the notion of open communication being a key to you understanding who you’re working with and what the purpose that law is to ultimately be something that is recognized as an important element and something that along the way need to be recognized and considered. But it’s not a purpose in itself, right? The purpose in itself is not to conduct a legally compliant procurement process. The purpose in itself, is to build a bridge, let’s say, right, or deliver specific services. So yeah, but that was pretty much it for us today. So we discussed, for our main the various aspects of interdisciplinary work. We recognize that we can talk about interdisciplinary work with other fields of science, such as economics, supply chain management, and hardcore geosciences. But there’s also something to be said about working between fields of law as a type of cross-disciplinary or within disciplinary but other branches of law. What are the pros and cons? Maybe not necessarily pros and cons, but what are the challenges? What are the great aspects of it, and where are students or young professionals on the path? Should you specialize straight away? Should you go quite broad? We concluded that as with everything in life, it’s all about people, the right, people in your life, the right collaborations, being open, being flexible, and enjoying as we go along on this path of interdisciplinary work. So thank you, Willem. Thank you to our listeners,

Willem Janssen  42:28  

Well said, well said, Marta.

Marta Andhov  42:30  

And without further ado, this was Bestek, the Public Procurement Podcast.

About Bestek  42:34  

This was Bestek, the Public Procurement Podcast. Do you want to contribute to today’s discussion? Then share your thoughts on LinkedIn or Twitter. Do you have an idea for a future episode? Write to us at www.bestekpodcast.com.

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