Archive - November 2009
APUC and institutions take collaboration to a new level
With a new Chief Executive, rapid expansion in membership, a new overarching brand and agreement on ways of working together, APUC and institutions are truly working in partnership and moving forward positively.
Angus Warren joined APUC in mid-July as Chief Executive. Angus is currently undertaking a review of APUC’s operations which will take account of the recent 'Strategic Dialogue' process outcomes as well as wide client institution consultation. This will culminate in re-modelling the way APUC operates to enable an increase in scope of responsibility and outputs from the organisation, within existing budgets. Angus plans to visit all 62 client institutions over the coming months.
This increase in outputs and scope will include aspects such as the number of tenders operated by APUC, the number of tenders and contracts facilitated jointly with institutions and other collaborative procurement bodies (both in Scotland and across the UK university and college sectors), higher levels of involvement in contract implementation and supply management, as well as provision of a customer management (and tendering support options in some cases) service.
The outputs from a ‘Contracting Priorities and Ways of Working Together Workshop’, held in early September, form a key part of the operational review. As well as identifying contracting priority areas, it was agreed at the workshop that APUC and institutions will jointly represent APUC and the college and university sectors under an overarching brand: Colleges and Universities Procurement Partnership – Scotland (CUPPS).
With Perth College being the latest institution to become a member of APUC, the membership total now stands at 59 out of 62 (100% of higher education institutions and 93% of further education colleges). A rapid expansion of membership followed on from the very successful APUC AGM and associated presentations held on 29 April 2009.
APUC's highlights
- Collaborative Procurement: 24 Category B contracts are now in place.
- Capital Procurement Projects: The separately-funded CPP team is working with four colleges providing specialist capital projects support. Savings of over £1 million have been realised to date against expenditure of just under £9 million.
- ePS: 39 institutions are now on the ePS service and further implementations are in progress. £1.2 million process efficiency savings reported.
- Procurement Capability Assessments: the PCA programme commenced in September, with 31 institutions (representing >90% of spend) being assessed by December 2009. The other 31 will be assessed in early 2010.
- Communications: A new, weekly ezine replaces the multitude of emails that individual staff previously sent to our key contacts. This has been very well-received across the board. Webinars will be used as a new communications medium for discussions and sharing documents, to save on time, travel and venue costs for all.
- Internal systems: A document and contact management system is being implemented. A job evaluation and pay modelling process has commenced.
Procurement Capability Assessments - work to date and future plans
By the first week in December 2009, 31 Procurement Capability Assessments (PCAs) will have been carried out, including 15 higher education institutions and 16 further education colleges.
The PCAs for universities and colleges are being conducted in parallel with the same assessments being carried out in Health, Local Authorities, ‘blue light’ services, government departments, agencies and non-departmental public bodies.
The Public Procurement Reform Board, chaired by John Swinney MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth, intends to review the outputs from the exercise in January 2010 with a view to putting into place an ongoing assessment and improvement for 2010 and beyond.
A great deal has been learned from the process carried out in the universities and colleges to date. The value and benefits to come from the process have been recognised, but so also have been the issues, areas of concern and future possible options for assessments to be done.
APUC will hold a PCA consultation workshop with institutions (both those assessed and those not yet assessed) on 9 December at Stirling Management Centre. For further information and registration details, please email
Lucy Somerfield.