University collaboration must become the norm to cut costs, not standards

Detachment from day-to-day fees demands addressing if we’re to make every pound count, says Florence Gregg. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Our universities are going by way of a period of unprecedented change, from uncertainty around long term higher training funding to a falling, but ever a lot more demanding, pupil consumption. All of this has produced monetary pressures on a scale by no means noticed before.

Procurement can be an essential avenue to addressing some of these troubles. Acquiring far better value for cash from universities’ sizeable purchasing energy tends to make sense and there is a lot of scope for that to take place. But to recognize the problems this entails, it truly is critical to enjoy the complexity of larger training procurement. When I was head of buying at Queen’s University Belfast, my employees have been concerned in purchasing every thing from toilet rolls to the latest scientific equipment. Universities get every little thing a nearby authority buys and a complete good deal a lot more.

1 anecdote, from the mid-1990s, that highlights the complexity of what we acquire was the purchase of a massive piece of high-end equipment for set up on the eleventh floor of a building. Soon after dismissing all possible options – such as employing a helicopter to lift it by way of a window – we concluded the item we bought would have to be ready to be divided in half, taken up the stairwell and put back together once more. It duly arrived in two elements, was hoisted up and reassembled. It worked! The difficulty is, a handful of weeks later on it grew to become apparent the tools employed a phenomenal quantity of electrical power, making it also pricey to run.

How could this take place? Nicely, the university’s power bills have been paid for centrally so from the level of view of the academic, when making his analysis grant application, electricity wasn’t some thing that he had to fret about. This detachment from true day-to-day expenses is typical across a lot of institutions and must be addressed if we’re to make each pound count. In Queen’s, we commenced to seem at the total value of ownership of all our purchases.

A amount of universities are taking a fresh search at the way they invest. A single example is Lancaster University, which following comprehensive enterprise approach testimonials, has made a decision to be proactive in driving down its charges and consolidating spending activity. Over the previous 12 months, department by department, it has been centralising its procurement so that every spot of invest goes by way of one particular office. The main obtain has been efficiencies in approach but the modify has also highlighted inconsistencies in method and places in which departments could be employing the exact same contracts rather than building them from scratch.

The need to have for a fresh seem at procurement has been much more pressing for others. Quickly following its launch in 2007, the University of Cumbria located itself with rising debts as the economic downturn and austerity measures kicked in. It has set about restructuring its strategy to procurement in order to discover £800,000 of savings more than the up coming four years.

Cumbria found it had quite a few examples in which the lack of a joined-up technique meant opportunities to operate much more effectively had been being missed. 1 example was training: five departments had been sending workers out to the very same programs when it would have been less expensive to hire a person in to provide the training. From now on, senior managers will be provided obligation for various categories of invest with the aim of difficult demand and identifying where financial savings can be manufactured.

A single factor Cumbria and Lancaster have in widespread is the use of the North Western Universities buying consortium for their ‘bread and butter’ commit – things like stationery and computers. It not only saves cash but also frees up time to emphasis on more strategic regions of procurement.

A lot of universities have used collaborative procurement as far back as the 1980s, but there’s scope to do far more. Universities have been challenged to collaborate on 30% of their non-spend devote – the current figure is a extended way brief of this target. But how do you persuade men and women to make functioning collectively the norm at a time when they are competing in an more and more difficult industry?

It boils down to comprehending when it is appropriate to collaborate. A great instance is the university prospectus. You may possibly not want to share the very same graphic designer – the design differentiates you from others – but why not use the exact same printers? Regional getting consortia have an essential position to play in making it easier for universities to procure goods and services collaboratively and highlighting the benefits when they do.

Florence Gregg is a greater education procurement consultant and former head of buying at Queen’s University Belfast.

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University collaboration must become the norm to cut costs, not standards