The Louvre Abu Dhabi has landed!

I’m feeling very French and proud as the Louvre Abu Dhabi museum held its opening celebrations last weekend.

For Simfoni the opening represents the culmination of more than six months fast-track procurement as we battled to address our client's challenge of fitting out the museum in an unprecedented timeframe with a keen eye on cost.

Traditional procurement suggests that you can’t have it both ways - attractive pricing and expedited delivery yet this is precisely the challenge that Abu Dhabi Department of Tourism and Culture presented us with on this assignment.

The Simfoni Middle East Buying team was able to ramp up a team of tactical buyers who - through deployment of our purpose-built Vitesse buying platform and our extensive regional market expertise in FF&E and OS&E - were able to source over 2000 different sku’s from more than 100 vendors. And when you consider the artwork in the building and the prestige of the brand, there were not many standard items: trolleys with non-marking wheels was just the start, state of the ART(!) ticketing machines, and all manner of state of the HSE equipment including a boat!

I can’t think of a better example of how our tail spend management service combines a managed service, technology platform and content to deliver faster turnaround and lower pricing, at a lower cost of deployment than standing up an internal team.

Moreover, due to the time constraints, we also managed the expediting of the items, many of which came from specialist vendors in Europe requiring us to liaise in Arabic, English, French and German simultaneously.

It was a demanding engagement with a lot of long nights but receiving VIP invitations to the opening celebrations was a big plus - it's not often we get to enjoy the fruits of our labour!

My congratulations to ADDTC and everyone involved in such a landmark addition to the Abu Dhabi community.