Collaborative 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 40- 45% of total spend in the university and college sectors is purchased through collaborative agreements.

Collaborative tenders are led or jointly managed on institutions' behalf by working with other UKUPC purchasing consortia across the UK and other sectoral Centre of Expertise in Scotland 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.

Framework Agreements

All Frameworks available to APUC's client institutions can now be accessed by clicking specific Frameworks to obtain more information. A search facility is also provided.

Each Framework entry contains the APUC contact and suppliers, click on the agreement row in the table to view more details about the agreement, any additional information can be found in the Quick Reference Guide (QRG) PDF download. Using the link on the QRG will take you to the new Hunter Buyers Portal

If you require access to this resource and have not already been notified of your login details please contact APUC Helpdesk. The sign up process is quick and easy. Alternatively, please contact your local procurement team for assistance.