Monthly Archives: January 2023

Opportunities

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So many possibilities….

On the 9th January 2023 the second reading of the Procurement Bill in the House of Commons took place. Set to come into force Spring this year, it is intended to improve and simplify the way public procurement is undertaken in the UK, with a keen focus on value for money, transparency and creating better opportunities for SMEs.

York St John University understands the value of working with SMEs and so the purpose of this blog is to advise SMEs of how to submit tenders, where, and provide a bit of background about York St John University and the type of procurement we do.

Our income is from our students (around 9000 at last count) and the majority of that is spent on the resources around delivering the courses such as academic fees, buildings, utilities, but it is so much more. In the last 2 years we have brought our catering in house and tendered for an open day shell scheme, sports kit for staff and students, external and internal audit services, apprenticeship support services, an Economic and Social Impact Assessment, project management course support, marketing agency services, a campus medical practice, pitch light installation and maintenance, heating, ventilation and air conditioning, to name but a few. Most of our procurement work has been for the York Campus, but we also support our London Campus.

Our opportunities are posted on the North Eastern Universities Purchasing Consortium’s (NEUPC) Delta Platform, but are also on the Governments Contract Finder. For a supplier they will need to go to https://neupc.delta-esourcing.com/ and register. The portal is a joint project between the universities of Bradford, Bishop Grosseteste, Huddersfield, Leeds, Leeds Arts, Leeds Beckett, Leeds Trinity, Lincoln, Northumbria, Teeside, York St John, along with the Royal Armouries. Registering on the portal does not mean you are an approved supplier, but it will give suppliers access to tenders which they can then choose whether or not to bid on.

Once on Delta,  suppliers can review the tender opportunities, review documents and when ready, bid. We ensure all our Invitation to Tender documents are created in as simple a format as possible, provide the required information as to what we are looking to procure, detailed specifications, information on how we want the the bid to be responded to and the weighting and scoring we will use for all the bids. We also need suppliers to complete a questionnaire within Delta which asks for general company, financial and legal information.  If you have any queries on the tender you can submit them via the Delta messaging service and we will create a Q&A so all suppliers have access to the same data. Once you have submitted your tender, and the deadline has passed Delta releases all bids so we can open and start our evaluation process.

So there you have it, how to do business with York St John University. The key actions I would suggest to any buyer wanting to work with York St John University are to: –

  • Register your company on https://neupc.delta-esourcing.com/
  • Please read the invitation to tender document carefully and ensure your response answers what we ask, and you provide the relevant evidence and look at the weighting associated to each element.

Happy bidding!

Commercial Corner S1E3

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Commercial Corner Podcast

Commercial Corner S1E3 – The one where we talk about finance

In this episode of Commercial Corner, Paul and Vicky talk about procurement policies, vending machines and are joined by their super, special guest David Howell from York St John University, to get some insight into the world of finance.

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Mavericks and Rogues

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'Maverick' actor, Tom Cruise

I feel the need… the need for procurement compliance!

The primary focus of any procurement team will be to obtain goods and services in a cost effective and timely manner.  However, in any complex organisation there will likely be a whole range of policies and procedures that define the particular way that activity needs to be carried out.  Managing compliance may not always be a glamorous part of the job and indeed it can give procurement people a reputation as being something like traffic wardens – people accept that they have a legitimate role to play, but they don’t always appreciate it when it comes to enforcing the rules.

Having worked in a number procurement teams across very different organisations, I have seen non-compliance and maverick spending in many forms.  Whilst all of these companies had very clear procurement policies that specified how money should be spent, who can spend it, and who needs to be told when it is being spent – there are still instances where individuals step beyond those guidelines and go rogue.  It is very rare that anyone does this with the intention of causing harm to their organisation, or for reasons of personal gain – though there is always a risk that someone is avoiding the rule because they’re getting up to something nefarious e.g. fraud.

It may be that a perfectly sensible policy has been badly communicated and they’re simply not aware of their obligations and the consequences of not following the prescribed course of action.  It might be that the policy itself is too generic and causes operational challenges for a particular team and it’s impairing their ability to carry out their day to day work.  Most people just want the things they need to do their jobs and it can be these good intentions that drive them to take perceived short cuts, that end up generating administrative headaches to put right later.  This could involve setting up new suppliers for payment, contractual disputes or even the receipt of goods and services that are unsuitable for use.  Duplication and unnecessary work all round, that doesn’t solve the issue that started this chain of events – people wanting to get their jobs done and needing things to achieve that.  Of course, there is always a hard line that can’t be crossed – overspend, or unethical spend can occur by accident more often than by design.  These are usually disciplinary matters and whilst procurement may be responsible for enforcing rules, the consequences that follow from a health and safety breach (bought poorly) or committing to spend money you don’t actually have (bought too much) are likely to fall to Human Resources or Finance teams.

However, there are things that procurement people can do to get on the front foot, and having good relationships with our internal teams will always go half of the way towards limiting these instances of maverick spending.  Being proactive and asking them what is in their future plans that will need additional procurement, or finding out what is not working right at this moment.  If you can have those conversations earlier, rather than later, you might save yourself a lot of unwanted surprises further down the line.