Procurement and State aid specialist Stephanie Rickard has joined VWV’s commercial team as a partner.

Stephanie has over 20 years’ experience advising on and managing complex and high value procurements and projects, including advising clients on defending and bringing procurement challenges as well as non-contentious matters. She joins from Burges Salmon, where she was a legal director.

During her career, Stephanie has also spent time working in-house on secondment to a railway parts manufacturer and undertook a stage at the European Commission.

She has advised on a number of high profile procurements, including the regeneration of Royal Albert Dock in London, and various programmes for the decommissioning of nuclear sites (value in excess of £3bn). Stephanie also acted for the University of Bristol in the establishment and ongoing operation of the National Composites Centre, which provides state-of-the-art manufacturing, research and development and skills training for the manufacture of composite materials.

Stephanie is described by clients as ‘responsive and providing consistently reliable advice in some challenging and complex matters’.

Stephanie commented on her appointment: ’I am delighted to be joining VWV. The next few years are going to present plenty of opportunities and challenges from a procurement perspective. For example, clients will need to navigate around the implications of Brexit for procurement and State aid. We are also likely to see clients wanting to use the procurement rules more flexibly to achieve their policy objectives, whether to promote sustainability, to vary existing contracts or to enable greater public to public co-operation.

’I admire VWV’s strong sector focus in particular in the education and public sectors and I am looking forward to bringing my experience to the established teams.’

VWV managing partner Simon Heald said: ’We are delighted to welcome Stephanie to the firm. I am confident that she will build on the reputation of our education, public sector and procurement teams.’

Stephanie is a member of the Procurement Lawyers Association, where she has contributed to several working groups, most recently on Brexit.

Outside of work, Stephanie is a keen cellist. She looks forward to being able to attend regular concerts at St George’s Hall, which is just up the road from the VWV Bristol office.

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