About

The 14 lawyers that serve the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) are tasked with providing a solid legal foundation for the civil authority whose mission is to deliver defence logistics to the Swedish Armed Forces. The legal team is led by general counsel Anders Sjöborg, who has overseen the team as it grew more proactive in service delivery and has boosted the ranks by employing five new lawyers over the last two years, in line with FMV’s overall employee growth from 1,500 to 3,400. According to Sjöborg, the team’s involvement in the early stages of projects has been a significant shift; particularly with public procurement, as no changes are allowed to be made to tender documents once the procurement process has started. The team has also played an important role during extremely complex new submarine contracts and several major procurements, such as heavy trucks and armoured vehicles. Another external factor which has had a great impact on the legal team is the implementation and execution of the Defence and Security Directive (2009/81/EG). The new Swedish legislation, based on the directive, entered into force in November 2011, creating new rules for the conducting of defence and security procurements. FMV, as the dominating actor in defence and security procurement in Sweden, has had a major role in interpreting the new law, much of which has needed the involvement of the legal team. During the actual implementation period, the FMV legal team was represented in expert groups held by the Swedish Government. FMV has also been involved in court rulings regarding the interpretation of the new legislation (around 30 per year) and has in fact been a major part in creating the legal practice for defence and security procurements. One team member states that the FMV legal team ‘handles the court cases itself and we win over 90% of them. It is very hard to put a figure on the value of our services’, but this is a good indication of the value the team delivers. The more proactive way of working with legal issues at the early stages in a project will definitely result in better decision making and better risk assessment. That will, in turn, lead to better and more cost effective procurements and contracts. In the end, Swedish tax payers will get more value for their taxes.