North east universities to benefit from £750m construction agreement
Collaborative procurement on construction for universities in the north east of England has been made easier with a £750m framework agreement, the first of its scale in the UK. Greg Barnes, who worked on the agreement for the North Eastern Universities Procurement Consortium (NEUPC), describes its benefits and lessons learned while putting it together.
£14.8m cash efficiency savings for NEUPC members
Following the publication of the North Eastern Universities Purchasing Consortium’s (NEUPC) annual report, Maria Langham describes the consortium’s recent achievements and how it plans to support universities in their mission to deliver world-class education in the future.
The promises programme – becoming a ‘no hidden extras’ university
Coventry University has sought to become a “no hidden extras” university by providing core textbooks to undergraduates. Michael Duffy explains how the university’s procurement team rose to the challenge of giving students more for their investment.
Efficiency Exchange update 28 January 2014
A round-up of news and comment on smarter working in universities. Now weekly!
HE’s financial health… and a missed opportunity
Procurement - why no mention of it in HEFCE's latest report on the financial health of the higher education sector? asks Andy Davies, Director of London...
G-Cloud: universities can use new online marketplace
G-Cloud is a UK Government initiative to encourage the adoption of Cloud Services across the whole of the Public Sector as well as the higher education sector. It aims to simplify how the Public Sector buys and delivers services by creating a marketplace of pay-as-you-go commodity services that can be easily scaled up or down, based on the changing needs of an organisation and its users.
SUPC – supporting sustainability procurement
While sustainable procurement is no easy task, it is becoming increasingly important to higher education institutions in the UK. As a key service provider of collaborative procurement solutions to the higher education sector, SUPC is exploring ways to support members in the procurement of goods and services that provide value for money, benefit society and the economy, while also minimising damage to the environment.
The Procurement Journey: a ‘how to’ guide from HEPA
The Procurement Journey gives procurement professionals and wider institutional buyers access to a comprehensive 'how to' guide to procurement, including a wealth of useful materials, standardised documentation, up-to-date legislation information, and references to appropriate external advice websites. It has been professionally reviewed, and is now available online for use across the sector.
Procurement revisited – selected case studies from higher education
The second phase of efficiency work in higher education led by Professor Sir Ian Diamond and coordinated by Universities UK is well under way and a report will be published next February. Watch this space for a forthcoming series of articles to highlight this work which we will be publishing over the coming weeks. In the meantime, we thought it would be interesting to re-share some of the best examples of good practice we've found - for those of you who might have missed them first time around. Today: a selection of case studies on procurement.
Report reveals impact of collaborative procurement in England
Procurement England Ltd marks a successful year with the publication its first annual report, which highlights its progress in strengthening collaborative procurement in higher education. Marion Lois Hutchins introduces the report.
