Procurement

Part 2/3: Scientific laboratories are extremely energy and materials intensive. Burgeoning efforts have been arising to improve their efficiency and sustainability. To explore this Efficiency Exchange will be sharing a 3 part-series on the topic. Part 1 will examine the current state of Green Lab efforts. Part 2 will discuss the importance of research quality, and how the crisis of reproducibility is affecting sustainability/efficiency. Finally, Part 3 will introduce a new tool named LEAF, and how a group of research-intensive institutions are working together to address these areas

Last year Jisc began looking for the best way to show use and sharing of research equipment across the UK. The search uncovered a number of web apps and systems that already collect data on usage, and drive efficiencies in this area. They're primarily used by researchers, principal investigators and lab technicians across a number of institutions. Daniela Duca has been looking at five of them in more detail.

Outsourcing is an increasingly popular way for universities to keep costs down and to focus their activities on their core business, but there are risks involved. London Universities Purchasing Consortium's Andy Davies gives his top 10 tips for managing big-ticket outsourced contracts.