Australian National Higher Education Procurement Benchmarking Programme Launched

HES is pleased to announce that a submission under the DEST Workplace Productivity initiative was successful and DEST has provided $6.1M funding to assist in implementing a sector-wide procurement benchmarking programme between early 2007 and 2009.

In your letter you asked to be kept informed of future developments with respect to the submission made to DEST on behalf of the sector by the University of Newcastle, to support a national procurement-benchmarking programme, following advice from the Australian Universities Procurement Consortium, in which you university is an active participant, and HES.

HES is pleased to advise you that the submission under the Workplace Productivity initiative was successful and DEST has provided $6.1M funding to assist in implementing a sector-wide programme between early 2007 and 2009. We are very pleased to advise that thirty universities have given in-principle agreement to participate and that the Programme is due to launch this week on 1 February 2007.

In preparation for the commencement of this large national programme, advisory groups drawn on a voluntary basis from universities have already scoped the first three supply categories and the procurement functions, to be benchmarked in Phase 1. These sub-projects will commence in February 2007. HES as the Project Management Partner will be calling for expressions of interest from amongst participating universities to scope future sub-projects and will be relying on the advice of the Australian Universities Procurement Consortium Executive (AUPC) in respect to the choice of future commodities.

Each university will be provided with detailed market intelligence reports that will allow them to review current supply contracts, prepare for tenders and evaluate bids more effectively. The reports will also provide confidential analyses for individual institutions identifying savings potential.

An aggregated data report preserving the anonymity of all parties will be provided in respect to each sub-project making a higher education sector comparison and were applicable, comparisons will be provided with public sector and private enterprise data.

The AUPC Executive will review this data to determine if it is feasible to develop regional or national supply contracts.

This programme is funded by the Australian Government Department of Education, Science & Training