Operational Procurement

Exploiting opportunities for collaborative procurement

The university and college sectors, particularly in Scotland, have been at the forefront of procurement collaboration for many years. Collaboration has yielded significant savings for the sectors prior to the formation of APUC and increasingly since.

Establishing APUC in early 2007 was timely as it coincided with various changes to the EU procurement regulations, which have become significantly more bureaucratic and therefore resource-intensive.

Seeking to further build on opportunities for collaboration in 2010 and beyond, APUC has restructured to significantly increase the number of contracting categories that are collaboratively purchased. Around 10-80% of institutions' non-salary spend is being collaboratively procured, which equates to over 45% of total spend in the university and college sectors.

See APUC's contracting plans and current responsibilities.

Meeting client expectations

With an account management approach to service delivery, APUC is focused on meeting and exceeding client institutions' needs in a timely manner.

Collaborative tenders are led or jointly managed on institutions' behalf by working with other purchasing consortia across the UK where it adds value for client institutions by doing so. User Intelligence Groups (UIGs) made up of institutional representatives define needs in detail, produce product or service specifications and set benchmark values for benefits tracking.

The Institutional Procurement Services team supports colleges in capital or above EU threshold tenders. See more information here about the unique services offered by the team.

See the full Operational Procurement team contact details.