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Equality and diversity making it happen in
procurement

• Margaret Burgess-Wood, Purchasing Manager

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Strategic Objectives

• 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

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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

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Embracing corporate social responsibility
throughout the purchasing process
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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

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University Spend Pattern

• Pareto's principle where 80 per cent of the
  Universitys 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

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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 SMEs to supply
  to the University.

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No of Suppliers
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Financial Year 07/08
Spend 2008 Cumulative Supplier Spend Cumulative No of Suppliers
Aggregate Order values gt50K 67,362k 228
Aggregate Order values 10K to 49K 77,916k 706
Aggregate Order values 5K to 9K 80,280k 1036
Aggregate Order values lt5K 83,705k 4764
Total number of active suppliers used in 07/08 is
4764
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Financial Year 07/08
Aggregate Order values gt50K Aggregate Order values 10K to 49K Aggregate Order values 5K to 9K Aggregate Order values lt5K
80 13 3 4
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Financial Year 07/08
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The Procurement Process
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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

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Designing the Tender Process

• 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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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Purchasing DepartmentThe Open UniversityWalton
HallMilton KeynesMK7 6AA

• www.open.ac.uk