After being 31 years, a professor at the University Twente and an authority in the world of Purchasing and Procurement in the public sector Prof. Dr. Jan Telgen gave his farewell speech on Friday May 26, 2018.
In his speech, Jan Telgen qualified the most common used method (the relative method) as an unjust calculation method for tendering. There is evidence that in about 15 percent of all public tenders in the Netherlands a supplier is appointed, who would not have been chosen, if another number of suppliers had submitted. The value of these tenders is €20 billion each year. In his farewell lecture, he elaborated on the challenges and opportunities for deployment of government procurement for realizing socially relevant goals, such as sustainability, social cohesion and innovation. The total value of the public procurement in the Netherlands, with a spend of € 135 billion yearly, should be part of public policy and should stimulate sustainability and innovation, instead of making separate innovation and sustainability policy with small budgets of some millions of euros.
After his farewell speech, the major of the city of Enschede, Dr. Onno van Veldhuizen decorated Jan Telgen on behalf of His Majesty the King as Officer in the Order of Orange Nassau. Prof. Dr. Christine Harland, Gianluca Spina Professor of Supply Chain Management at Politecnico di Milano, thanked Jan Telgen for the scientific cooperation in the past decades. NEVI chairman Siep Eilander shared his warm memories working with Jan Telgen in different jobs. For the occasion, the NEVI-magazine DEAL! Joind Jan’s contributions through the years in a special issue renamed in JAN! Finally, the head of the department Technology Management and Supply of the University of Twente, Prof. Dr. habil. Holger Schiele concluded the session with the statement “University is there, where the professor is.” Whether this would be in Nepal, Uganda, Twente or Lunteren. Hence, the department handed Jan Telgen a scale model of the university logo that in large scale is found at the campus entrance, except that it does not say “University of Twente”, but it says “University of Telgen”, so that Jan can take it wherever he goes from now on!
Some people argued it looked that good that the university should be renamed accordingly. However, this is still a matter of debate…
