Procurement & Commercial – Governance Five™ © Guide (Informational)

Governance Five™ © focuses on the governance method that sits around and through procurement and commercial activity. It describes how decisions move through five stages: Govern → Engage → Aggregate → Deliver → Evolve™ ©.

By contrast, procurement and commercial practice deals with what is done in detail – sourcing steps, evaluation techniques, negotiations, contracts, probity controls, category strategies, panels, and BAU processes.

Put simply:

• Governance Five™ © – the staged method that makes decisions traceable, participatory, and explainable at a high level.
• Procurement practice – the tools and procedures organisations and governments use to source, contract and manage spend.

When used lawfully under licence, Governance Five™ © can help organisations show that their existing procurement and commercial work is coherent, structured and auditable across different categories and jurisdictions – without changing underlying law, policy or standards.

Organisations typically work within one or more formal structures, for example:

• Government / public-sector rules (e.g. Commonwealth Procurement Rules, state or local government policies).
• Internal procurement and commercial policies, procedures and delegations.
• Sector standards and guidance (e.g. ISO governance/anti-bribery, probity and integrity guidance, contract-law norms).
• Frameworks developed by advisers, consultancies or professional bodies.

Governance Five™ © does not replace or override any of these. Instead, it operates as a single governance flow that can sit above them, providing a common language for how decisions are governed from intent to learning, independent of specific category or contract model.

Governance Five™ © integrates at the governance-method level alongside recognised procurement, commercial and probity frameworks (for example, CPRs, ISO standards, value-for-money requirements and organisational sourcing policies) and does not replace, direct or instruct procurement practice.

This distinction is important for role clarity:

• Boards, executives and councils retain authority over policy, risk appetite and commercial strategy.
• Chief Procurement Officers and commercial leaders retain responsibility for procurement design, evaluation methods, negotiation and contract management.
• Governance Five™ © simply provides an authored, licensed method that can make the overall decision-structure visible, auditable and consistent across those activities.

Organisations may choose to use Governance Five™ © (under licence) to give a single, auditable shape to how procurement and commercial work is governed. Illustrative examples:

• Govern – showing how delegations, policies, conflict-of-interest rules, evaluation frameworks and social/sovereign objectives are set before market engagement.
• Engage – evidencing how suppliers, community stakeholders, workforce representatives, regulators or partners were included in structured, impartial engagement prior to final criteria and design.
• Aggregate – documenting how needs, risks, market insights and stakeholder priorities were brought together to shape sourcing strategy, evaluation weightings or commercial models.
• Deliver – linking evaluations, negotiations and contracts back to the agreed rules and engagement outcomes, rather than treating each as a separate story.
• Evolve – making sure lessons from delivery, disputes, probity issues or community feedback flow back into policy, criteria and future procurement, not just into project files.

Used this way, Governance Five™ © can help organisations answer questions such as:

• “How did you decide on these social-value or sovereign-capability criteria?”
• “Where were communities, local suppliers or First Nations voices considered?”
• “How do we know this decision followed the same governance flow as other high-value decisions?”

These examples are conceptual only. Each organisation should decide how, if at all, to apply the Framework and must design its own procurement and commercial procedures within applicable law and policy.

Since 2010, public-record examples of Power Group Purchasing™ © show how structured participation and group-buying can support transparent outcomes for households, member groups, unions and associations. Many later initiatives – including social-procurement, “fair offer” schemes and community tariff models – use similar language.

Governance Five™ © recognises that group-buying, framework agreements and social-value procurement can be run in many different ways. It does not claim ownership of group-buying as a concept. It does, however, protect the specific authored method and five-stage governance logic first delivered and evidenced under Power Group Purchasing™ ©.

Where organisations or advisers adopt staged public-value language, draw directly on public-record examples of Governance Five™ ©, or represent that a single, structured system underpins social-value, sovereign-capability or community-benefit outcomes, it may be appropriate to consider:

• whether the method being promoted is genuinely independent with pre-2010 provenance, or
• whether it is more accurate to acknowledge Governance Five™ © as authored origin and explore licensing.

These reflections are informational only and do not assert infringement, monopoly, or a particular legal outcome. They simply recognise that method origin is now part of how regulators, auditors and communities understand public-value claims.

Many organisations rely on external advisers – procurement consultants, probity practitioners, legal firms, ESG specialists, program-design experts – to support sourcing, evaluation, assurance and reporting.

This does not in itself create any Governance Five™ © connection. However, questions may arise where:

• Advisers describe or sell a single, staged public-value or social-value “system” used to justify procurement decisions, exemptions, funding, or sovereign-capability claims.
• Language mirrors the five-stage flow Govern → Engage → Aggregate → Deliver → Evolve™ or clearly draws on public-record examples of Governance Five™ ©.
• Public reports, bids or board papers rely on “our proprietary governance / social-value / community-uplift model” without clear, independently evidenced pre-2010 origin.

In those cases, organisations may choose to:

• Ask advisers to clarify method origin and provenance in writing.
• Confirm whether any licensing, attribution or custodianship considerations arise in relation to Governance Five™ ©.
• Ensure contracts do not mischaracterise authorship of governance methods used to influence public or investor expectations.

These steps are part of good governance housekeeping, not an accusation. They help boards, executives and probity officers show they have considered method origin in the same way they consider data, assumptions and conflicts.

For government agencies, state-owned enterprises and regulated monopolies or networks, procurement is already subject to significant oversight. Governance Five™ © is not intended to add another framework on top of this.

Instead, when used under licence it can help:

• Show how policy intent, community expectations and regulatory obligations were translated into sourcing criteria and engagement design.
• Structure evidence for inquiries, parliamentary scrutiny, integrity bodies or regulators examining fairness, participation or sovereign outcomes.
• Provide a consistent, authored structure for cross-agency or cross-jurisdiction programs where multiple entities share governance responsibilities.

The decision to adopt or license Governance Five™ © remains entirely with each institution and its advisers. Nothing here creates any obligation or implies deficiency where it is not used.

Listed companies, major corporates and supply-chain leaders increasingly frame procurement and commercial activity as part of their ESG, social-value, sustainability and licence-to-operate story.

Without altering those obligations, Governance Five™ © can, if licensed, help:

• Provide a single narrative structure for how procurement, supplier engagement and contracts support community, environmental and capability outcomes.
• Respond when investors, insurers or assurance providers ask “What system underpins these ESG or social-procurement claims?”
• Clarify where a company is using an authored governance system such as Governance Five™ ©, rather than describing it as a generic in-house model.

Again, this page does not advise companies to adopt Governance Five™ ©. It simply explains how the method can interface conceptually with procurement and supply-chain activity where organisations independently decide to license and apply it.

The following prompts are optional. They do not assume any issue or outcome. They may help boards, executives, procurement leaders and probity officers structure internal conversations about method origin and governance:

• How do we currently describe the governance method that sits above our procurement and commercial activity – is it implicit, or clearly documented?
• Where we use staged language for public value, social value, sovereign capability or community uplift, can we show independent pre-2010 provenance, or should we explore attribution and licensing?
• Do our contracts with advisers and delivery partners accurately reflect authorship of any governance methods used to justify exemptions, funding, or public-value claims?
• Would it be helpful to document a position such as “we use Governance Five™ © under licence” or “we have independently evidenced our own pre-2010 method origin” for future audit and assurance?
• How might a single, licensed governance flow (such as Governance Five™ ©) reduce duplication between ESG, social-procurement, risk, probity and community-engagement frameworks?

These prompts are not a checklist or assessment tool. They are intended purely as conversation starters for organisations that wish to treat governance method origin as part of their broader integrity, assurance and accountability work.