Rita Silva is a Certified Public Purchasing Officer with over 20 years of public procurement experience at Miami-Dade County which serves 2.7 million residents with an annual budget of $8 billion. She has held various professional procurement positions there, including managing a team that handled hundreds of best value procurements. Rita currently serves as the Chief of Policy, P3 and Innovative Procurement for the Internal Services Department. In this capacity, she developed and implemented a new P3 procurement process for the county, resulting in the award of the Civil and Probate Courthouse project. That new procurement process is serving as a model for future P3 endeavors. Rita established the procurement training manager role at the county, including conducting a training needs assessment, preparing the training plan, conducting training, and working with other trainers to prepare their training modules. Rita also has 10 years of private sector experience working at a Fortune 500 company which included a position as a Construction News Reporter where she interviewed professionals in the field and followed news leads on construction projects for publication in the Dodge Reports. Rita holds a Bachelor of Public Administration and Master of Science in Human Resources Development from Florida International University. She received the Outstanding Academic Achievement Award for Public Administration, awarded by the FIU College of Urban & Public Affairs.
Sessions
Construction - Innovating Construction Procurement: Exploring the Use of Public Private Partnerships (P3) for Social Infrastructure