Procurement

The Diamond review of 2011 clearly flagged procurement as an area with potential for achieving efficiencies and value for money. In advance of the publication of the second efficiency review in February, Nick Petford looks back at what the sector has achieved.

New EU directives call upon public authorities to seek social value in their procurement activities. Universities, while not being public bodies, should nevertheless strive to achieve the same high societal value via their commissioning, Nick Petford Vice-Chancellor of the University of Northampton told the Inside Government Conference on 20 June.

The higher education energy market is becoming increasingly competitive. Richard Murphy from the public buying organisation The Energy Consortium (TEC) warns of the hidden dangers in the contracting process and urges universities to involve a broad range of departments when procuring energy services.

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.

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.