Ken Odgers

Ken is CIPFA qualified and, with 37 years of experience, is responsible for the delivery of CAL’s procurement and contract review services.

After a career in local government, Ken established CAL in 1998 and has since helped many public sector organisations review and enhance their procurement processes. This has included the establishment of systems to manage and record Government and EU grants, the development of corporate procurement strategies, and the leading of several major procurement exercises. With CAL, Ken has set up and administered tender evaluation and assessment methodologies for major projects for a number of public sector organisations. He also facilitates partnering workshops and has been appointed by several organisations to act as their ‘partnering advisor’. 

In addition to his experience in the procurement field, Ken also has nine years experience of auditing grants for the performance of science and engineering research, mainly through projects funded by the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE) in England. This has included the establishment of systems and procedures for the accurate recording of eligible expenditure and the timely requesting of drawdowns. Further, during the last three years, he has been auditing European Commission funded projects for the Government in the Republic of Ireland. This has included the reviewing of systems adopted within various government agencies to record eligible expenditures, and ensuring they comply with EU legislation regarding procurement and publicity, as well as compliance with EU environment and equality policies.

Ken is a member of the CIPFA Audit Panel with the specific remit of contracts and procurement and has a reputation for being an expert in his field. He has written numerous publications on the subject of contracts including ‘Rethinking Construction in Local Government’ which was issued free by Constructing Excellence in 2004 to all local authorities in England and Wales. His latest publication, ‘A Risk Based Approach to the Audit of Contracts’ was published by the CIPFA in January 2010. Ken also regularly lectures and presents courses on various procurement issues including the EU procurement regime.

On a voluntary basis, Ken Chairs CIPFA’s Procurement and Contract Audit Forum (PACAF) which he helped to set up in 2008 with the remit to ”facilitate the identification, development and widespread adoption of best practice in procurement and contract audit”.

Jill Elliott

Jill has 19 years audit experience and is both a member and fellow of the Institute of Internal Auditors. She has been with CAL for ten years and is responsible for the delivery of CAL’s grant audit services.

Jill started her audit career in the Civil Service before joining Bentley Jennison (now RSM Tenon) as a client manager in 1998 where she led teams of internal auditors working primarily in further and higher education. Following CAL’s success in auditing HEFCE projects for UCL, Jill took responsibility for auditing European Commission Framework 6 projects.  As part of this work Jill delivered training seminars on the audit process for finance staff and auditors working on further education projects.  Jill has increased the number of CAL’s higher education clients through a reputation for establishing excellent working relationships and providing a tailored and high quality service.

In addition to providing EC Framework 6 and more lately Framework 7 audits, Jill is responsible for managing the audits for other externally funded projects. This includes DTI/TSB audits, EC AsiaLink and EuropeAid projects, Defra and ERDF work.  For all these audits she ensures that great care is taken to ensure that a full understanding of the grant mechanisms are in place and audit programmes are developed to ensure that timetables for the delivery of audit certificates are met.