Alastair has over 35 years’ experience working in a wide range of public sector, international, diplomatic and operational settings to deliver business transformation, strategy development and sound commercial governance.   

Alastair combines a part-time role as Vice Principal of the University of St Andrews, responsible for all aspects of corporate governance, with the provision of strategic procurement consultancy through his company, Merrill Solutions Ltd.  He has worked with governments and international organisations worldwide to design and deliver initiatives building professional procurement capacity and using data to deliver sustainable outcomes from public contracts. 

Alastair held the roles of Commercial Director and Chief Procurement Officer in the devolved Scottish Government from 2009-15.   He is the architect of the internationally acclaimed “Scottish Model of Procurement”, and successfully led the wide-ranging change programme required to implement it across the Scottish public sector.  He remains an influential advocate of procurement reform as a strategic enabler of policy development and public service delivery.

Particularly interested in the use of public contracts to deliver innovation and sustainable social, environmental and local economic benefits, Alastair pioneered the introduction of a “sustainable procurement duty” in primary legislation.  He has led a number of initiatives in Europe, Africa and the Middle East to encourage SMEs as drivers of economic growth, and to place sustainability at the heart of public purchasing. 

As the Scottish Government’s counter-fraud lead, Alastair was an early champion of e-procurement and the power of technology to provide greater transparency in public spend, and tackle fraud and corruption. He now specialises in the use of data analytics to deliver evidence-based decision-making in procurement, founded on robust management information.