‘Equality and diversity… making it
happen in procurement’
Margaret Burgess-Wood, Purchasing Manager
Strategic Objectives
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Annual Procurement Report – Finance Committee
£149.2m Non Staff Expenditure
£80m direct influence of Purchasing
£20.47 act in advisory capacity
Finance Division Equality Action Plan - Procurement
Procurement Strategy - Key Objectives
• Obtaining Value for Money
• Ensuring legal compliance in Procurement
• Continuing to develop best practice and supply
management skills
• Operating effective systems and processes
• Embracing corporate social responsibility throughout the
purchasing process
“Embracing corporate social
responsibility throughout the
purchasing process”
Tendering Activity for 07/08
• During the reporting period the following tenders
were completed:
– 11 EU tenders
– 8 below EU threshold tenders
– 3 mini bids under OGC framework agreements
– 4 mini bids under National HE framework agreements
University Spend Pattern
• Pareto's principle where 80 per cent of the University’s
spend is concentrated on 20 of its supplier base. The
high value spend is targeted and managed by senior
members within the Procurement team of the University
Reducing Supplier Base
• It is a University objective to reduce the number of orders placed on single
suppliers.
• This is very difficult to accomplish due to the specific nature of some the goods
and services being purchased.
• Organising the procurement of goods and services through large
University/collaborative agreements reduces the opportunity for small SME’s to
supply to the University.
No of Suppliers
Number of orders per supplier
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
Suppliers with one Suppliers with 2 – 5
order
orders
Suppliers with 6 –
10 orders
Suppliers with 11 – Suppliers with100+
99 orders
orders
Year 2008
2807
1426
248
240
43
Year 2007
2670
1352
235
238
41
no of suppliers
Financial Year 07/08
Spend 2008
Cumulative Supplier Spend
Cumulative No of Suppliers
Aggregate Order values >£50K
£67,362k
228
Aggregate Order values £10K to 49K
£77,916k
706
Aggregate Order values £5K to £9K
£80,280k
1036
Aggregate Order values <£5K
£83,705k
4764
Total number of active suppliers used in 07/08 is 4764
Financial Year 07/08
Aggregate Order
values >£50K
80%
Aggregate Order
values £10K to 49K
Aggregate Order
values £5K to £9K
13%
3%
Aggregate Order
values <£5K
4%
Financial Year 07/08
Aggregate Order Values for Financial Year 07/08
3%
4%
13%
80%
Orders >£50K
Orders £10K to 49K
Orders £5K to £9K
Orders <£5K
The Procurement Process
Specification
and
contract
conditions
Selection
Start
Definition
of needs
Invitation
to tender
Review
Evaluation
and award
Monitoring
and managing
Immediate
steps following
award of contract
Early Stages of the Procurement Process
• Planning procurement – reaching budget holders at the earliest
possible time
• Assess if the contract/requirement has high equality relevance i.e.
in terms of all aspects of equality - Race, Gender, Disability, Age,
Sexual Orientation
• Is equality a core requirement ?
• Examples
– Catering contracts
– Building contracts – access to buildings
– Temporary Staff Agency contracts
– Non-medical helpers
– Software contracts – Accessibility to students
– Printed materials
– Security guarding
Designing the Tender Process
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•
•
•
•
•
•
Decide on Tender strategy
Assess value
Decide procedure to be used - EU, Non EU,etc
Single source contracts
Draw up detailed specifications
Is Supplier Pre-qualification required?
Are there any Public Sector/ HE Sector Agreements
already in place
Advertising the Tender
• Dependent on the procurement process
• EU Tender Thresholds for Public Sector
– Supplies
£139,893
– Services
£139,893
– Works
£3,497,313
• OJEU - TED database
• In-Tend E-Tendering website
• Local advertising? Can we use locality as a qualification criteria?
• Hitting the wider market place
EU Procurement Principles
• Open/Transparent process for the award of public sector
contracts
• Suppliers have the ability to challenge decisions if they
feel they have been unfairly judged
• Remedies directive in place to ease the process of
taking legal action
• Illegal to discriminate
Supplier Pre-qualification Process
• Vendor Questionnaire includes a section on Equal
Opportunities
• Any supplier expressing interest in the tender must
supply this information as part of a pre-qualification
process. Any suppliers giving a negative response to
any of the questions are excluded or investigated further
• Documents are submitted electronically through the
University e-tendering system and archived with tender
documents
Selection and Award Criteria
• EU tenders are governed by procurement regulations
requiring the award criteria to be declared in advance
and this needs to be strictly adhered to.
• If Equality is a core requirement of the contract then it
can be one of the award criteria and given suitable
weighting
• It will not be the only criteria, other value for money
factors have to be taken into account.
Vendor Auditing
• Assessing the capability of the supplier
• Opportunity to inspect and discuss the requirements
• Look for evidence to back up equality statements
– Evidence of disabled workforce
– Evidence of ethnic and gender mix of workforce
– Evidence of environmental and ethical practices
• How are these aims projected within the company?
Contract
• Legally binding contracts or purchase orders will be
drawn up and signed.
• Equality clauses are built into contracts especially where
there is high relevance.
Contract Management
• Contract Management on strategically important
contracts that require active contract management
• Regular review meetings will cover any changes to
information provided during the selection process or
changes to contract conditions
• Opportunity to develop new ideas with suppliers
• Different from Supplier Management
– Estates – construction, building
Monitoring and Reporting
• Example of question in CRE vendor questionnaire:
Is your organisation an ethnic minority business (50% or more
of which is owned by members of one or more ethnic minority
groups, or, if there are
few owners, where at least 50% of
the owners are members of one or more
ethnic
minority
groups)? http://www.cre.gov.uk/gdpract/em_cat_ew.html
• Given the large number of suppliers the University uses, how
practical is it to use this question –
• When and how often is this information to be collected or
checked ?
• How do we ensure it is kept up to date?
• How is the data provided to be used?
• How can we use existing systems to capture more information,
KPIs etc
Resources Issues
• Can we do more?
• Resource issues – small team dealing with many
legislative pressures
• Suppliers regularly complain about the amount of
information required from multiple public sector bodies.
Over load ……
Purchasing Department
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
www.open.ac.uk