Every agency has thresholds: the small-purchase limit, the formal-bid threshold, the point where a contract goes to the board or council. The numbers are usually in the code. The practice around them usually isn't, so it lives with the two or three people who have done it for years.
What breaks when it isn't written
- New buyers stop and ask a senior buyer, who stops their own work to answer.
- Requests arrive on the wrong path and come back weeks later.
- Vendors get different answers depending on who picks up the phone.
- Sole-source and emergency purchases are improvised each time, and the file shows it at audit.
The dollar amount should tell you the path and the approvals before anyone has to ask.
What written looks like
A one-page table for each path the agency actually uses, with the dollar range, the procurement method, the approvals and who gives them, the required documents, and a realistic timeline. Then the exceptions: who may determine a sole source, who may declare an emergency and what must be reported afterward, and the citation for any cooperative-purchasing authority.
Where to start
Pull the purchasing code and any policy manual. List every dollar figure and every approval. Map them to the paths staff actually use, then walk each path with the people who run it to catch the practice that never made it into writing. Have Legal review the result. At the Rhode Island Airport Corporation, threshold and board-approval rules were written down this way as part of an 87-page operating guide.
A three-week procurement diagnostic includes this path inventory, and ends with a recommendation on what to write first.