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!