What do you most like about your job as director of procurement at Durham University?
The huge variety of the work and the opportunity to work at a strategic level within a world class university.
I report directly to the university's executive committee and lead a team of professional procurement staff who deliver an efficient and effective value for money service.
What would you say is distinctive about the way you manage procurement at Durham?
The procurement service is a central service and we have excellent relationships with all our key stakeholders and end users in all departments. We actively input to national higher education and regional purchasing consortia initiatives to drive forward service improvements.
I am actively involved in the development of the Higher Education Procurement Academy (HEPA), while my deputy director is a member of the BUFDG Professional Procurement Group. I'm also a member of the Procurement England Ltd (PEL) Advisory Panel and the Board of the North Eastern Universities Purchasing Consortia
In what ways does your team support the efficiency effort at your institution?
We undertake all procurement in an efficient and effective manner, with clear service levels and key performance indicators. We undertake 'whole life cost' procurement, looking much wider than just the price. We don't just measure savings, although our savings achievement are significant (around £3m per annum). We also measure cost avoidance achievements, service improvements as well as social and environmental improvements.
We undertake contract improvement plans with all university contractors. This means we don't just "let and forget" contracts, but continually improve them throughout their lifetime. Our contract management processes are well defined and key to our contract improvements.
Why is procurement so important for universities?
Professional procurement is key to achieving value for money, driving forward improvements, managing risk to the university and delivering significant benefits in terms of service delivery, managing suppliers, supporting the University strategy and achieving greater collaborative procurement, as required by the Diamond review.
I recognise that not all institutions organise procurement as we do at Durham. I do believe, however, that what we've achieved contributes to procurement being recognised by senior management as a strategic activity and demonstrates what can be achieved.
In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the procurement service in Durham, I had a maturity assessment undertaken in May this year. The results were excellent, we achieved an overall score of 83% and was the first institution to reach this level on a first assessment.
As a result of this we have developed an action plan for further improvements and aim to achieve a score of 90% at our next assessment.
What about developing awareness and skills?
Staff development is key to our success – 10 staff are MCIPS qualified, nine staff are NVQ3 qualified and our admin staff are BTEC qualified. In addition to formal qualifications we undertake skills training through HEPA, CIPS, Achilles and the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education.
As well as regular internal skills and update training, we run a programme of staff training courses as part of the University's regular training course programme and a clearly developed and targeted supplier development
programme.
To promote what we offer, we publish updates called 'Buy-In' in the University's regular Dialogue publication and use our eProcurement system to deliver specific information. We also take part in all of the university staff information fairs and at the annual environment Fair. We never miss an opportunity to promote what we do.
What's on your current to-do list?
At the moment we are continuing the roll out of our eProcurement system; we do this on a phased basis so that we can work closely with our end users. We are busy working closely with our colleagues in the university's Computing and Information Service on a major service improvement project, New World, which has some significant procurement requirements.
We are also refining the category management structure to ensure that it is fit for purpose. I am currently updating the procurement strategy and writing departmental plans for the period 2014-19 in preparation for the next planning round.
We are also preparing ourselves for the impending changes to the EU Public Procurement Regulations which are due to be finalised any day now. As soon as the details are known we will be training the staff so that they fully understand the changes and the implications for us as public sector procurement professionals.
And what are you looking forward to?
Spending 10 days in San Francisco in December. I will also be stage managing a production of Rapunzel and the Tale of Rumpelstiltskin with the local theatre group that I work with, which is hard work but great fun. The procurement is a little easier with this!
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