Our “30% Campaign” is launched

We’ve launched our “30%” Campaign designed to help LUPC Members, particularly those in the higher education sector, to meet the Diamond Report target of channelling 30% of non-pay spend through effective collaborative procurement arrangements within five years.

Our Members’ savings reports will be issued before the end of month, so Members can get an idea how they’re doing against the target. 

And from right now, there’s special training on offer and a short video presentation to help Members get the best from our collaborative supply agreements.  Visit our special 30% Campaign webpage for more details.

Dickenswatch at the British Library

After today’s LUPC Executive Committee meeting, my colleague Alasdair Fraser (Head of Procurement at the British Library) took me along to see Writing Britain: an exhibition exploring literature and place, from Wastelands to Wonderlands.

Alasdair had very kindly arranged to have co-curator Tanya Kirk give us a tour of the exhibition, which was a great personal privilege for me.  Her insight certainly added extra sparkle to what is already an utterly engrossing exhibition, linking British literary classics to the landscapes that inspired them.  It was like having an audio guide that answered questions!

Regular readers may recall how excited I was to see part of Dickens’s original transcript of Nicholas Nickleby at the Museum of London recently.  Well, this exhibition was packed with original manuscripts spanning an entire millenium, from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to J K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. 

Tanya explained that, after helping the victims of a train crash in 1865 in which ninety had perished, Dickens had clambered back into the wreckage to retrieve his manuscript of Our Mutual Friend, part of which is on show, with an oily splodge to prove it.

The manuscript normally hangs in the Morgan Library and Museum in New York.  Tanya told me that it cost £18,000 for an art courier to fly it - business class - to London especially for the exhibition.  (The manuscript gets its own seat!)

Contrast that with the living writers, some of whom had ferreted around their homes to unearth their manuscripts.  Tanya whispered that her co-curator had called at Hanif Kureishi’s house to discover that his dog-eared, typewritten manuscript of modern classic The Buddha of Suburbia had been kept in a Sainsbury’s carrier bag.

My sincere thanks go to Tanya, and to Alasdair for making this happen for me today.

Behold BUFDG PPG!

I noted with interest the announcement this week from the British Universities Finance Directors Group (BUFDG) that the Association of University Procurement Officers (AUPO) is to have a re-launch, with a new name and a new Chair.

Henceforth it’ll be called the BUFDG Procurement Professionals Group (PPG).  It’s a bit of a mouthful I suppose, but I’m sure we’ll get used to it soon enough.  The important thing is that our profession in the higher education sector is properly heard and supported – and that seems to be what BUFDG is willing to do.

We’ve known for some time that Jenny Bushrod would be stepping down after six industrious years at the AUPO helm, and I congratulate Jenny on her achievement.  Behold, then, our new Chair, Caroline Blackman-Edney, who is Head of Procurement at the University of Cambridge.  I’ve known Caroline for a good many years, long before I came to the sector, as she and I have both served on CIPS Council in the past.  I know she’ll bring her considerable governance experience to the role, matching her professional know-how.

My best wishes to Caroline and I look forward to supporting the BUFDG PPG conference in Cardiff this September.

Bob’s Your Uncle

I had the pleasure today of accepting an invitation from my colleague Bob Oldfield, Contracts Manager in the Procurement Section at the Natural History Museum, to his annual “Stationery Surgery” for the Museum’s users of LUPC’s office supplies and computer consumables framework agreement, supplied, in this case, by Office Depot.

The event was held in the historic De la Beche Room at the Museum, an Art Deco interior furnished with a lovely boardroom suite manufactured in 1934 by a firm in Dalston, I soon discovered.  The room is named in honour of Sir Henry Thomas De la Beche (1796 – 1855), an English geologist and palaeontologist who helped pioneer early geological survey methods.  The panelled walls are suitably bedecked with impressive geological survey maps of Great Britain and Ireland.

Anyway, I’ve been to a good number of this sort of thing during my career and found many to fall rather flat.  But Bob really engages his users and the room really responds warmly to him in a way that I’m sure many procurement heads would look upon with envy.  He was jolly, but unafraid to argue his point forcefully in the best interests of the Museum.  Among his ideas was a Happy/Sad Wall, to which delegates were invited to post their compliments and complaints about Office Depot’s service.  He told me that this encouraged users to raise their concerns and plaudits, which both he and the Office Depot people (Sarah Cruickshank and Dave Brown, who both showed an admirable can-do attitude) handled with vigour and enthusiasm.

The Museum’s Environmental and Sustainability Officer, Ellie Simes, was also on hand to encourage users to make sustainable choices in their purchase decisions.  Bob’s own system, enthusiastically supported by Office Depot, encourages users to compete internally for Green Points, thereby promoting sustainability extremely effectively.

Sarah Cruickshank told me that, at Office Depot, account managers fight over who gets to manage the NHM account, so rewarding do they find it.  I can certainly see why.

The “30% Target” and a Prize To Be Won!

As part of our response to Universities UK’s Diamond Report, LUPC will this week be launching a new campaign to increase the through-put of business through our collaborative supply agreements. 

The Report has set a target for English higher education to channel 30% of non-pay spend through collaborative procurement arrangements within five years.  (Our Members’ savings reports, scheduled for issue later this month, will help Members calculate their current base-line.)

To begin with, we’re staging a low-cost half-day introductory course for non-procurement experts – perhaps in laboratories, estates, libraries or HR – greater confidence and understanding of how to use our framework agreements and make the most of what LUPC can offer.  With a choice of two dates, on 11 June and 21 June, we’ll explain how framework agreements benefit institutions, the different methods of calling-off from frameworks, how to access information via the LUPC website and GeM and an opportunity to meet LUPC’s senior contracts managers for one-to-one ‘surgeries’ on specific agreements.   (Just click on the dates above for details and to book.)

Of course, booking is open to all our Members, not just those in higher education.  And if they should prove successful, we’ll stage more of them.

For good measure, we’ve also prepared a short video presentation explaining the benefits of collaborative procurement and of LUPC’s supply agreements in particular.  We also offer our suggestion as to what the HE sector needs if the “30% target” is to be reached.  You can get a sneak preview of the new video here.

But, as I’m sure you’ll agree, the video comes across as a bit sombre without a suitable music track.  So, for a bit of fun, we’re inviting Members to suggest an appropriate soundtrack for our video – perhaps a fitting song or tune.  The best (printable) suggestion received by 31 May will win a pair of tickets to either the Animal Inside Out or Scott’s Last Expedition exhibition, both on now at London’s famous Natural History Museum, until September.

To enter, just click on “Leave a comment” below or email enquiries@lupc.lon.ac.uk.  Have fun!

Partners in Procurement

Courtesy of The National Gallery

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be welcoming two world-class institutions into our family of Members here at LUPC this month.

The National Gallery, which houses the national collection of Western European painting from the 13th to the 19th centuries, and the National Portrait Gallery, founded in 1856 to collect portraits of famous British men and women from the 16th Century to the present day, became a full Member on 1 May.

They became a joint Member by virtue of the fact that they share a single team of procurement professionals, led by Liz Fomin, who is already well known to our Members in the museum sector.  (I hope Liz won’t mind my recalling that she and I worked together as far back as 1992 when we were both buyers in the Central Purchasing Unit at London Underground, just around the time that the EU procurement directives came into force.)

Need to find a partner? (kind permission of The National Portrait Gallery)

It’s made me wonder whether some of our smaller Members who don’t currently benefit from having a dedicated professional procurement resource could learn from the example set by Liz and her team.  There must be a number of opportunities where smaller or specialist institutions could share resources in this way.  The galleries have shown us that this can and does work.

Perhaps LUPC could help by finding and matching potential partners from among our Membership in the capital.  If this interests you, do please get in touch.

Games Maker Update: oh dear…

It looks like all the waiting will have been in vain.  Received from LOCOG:

“You are one of around 20,000 applicants who we know have the skill, determination and passion to be a Games Maker – and we hope to offer you a role in our final round of offers. However we cannot make this offer until a space becomes available due to more roles being required or another applicant rejecting their offer. If you do get an offer, you will receive all the necessary training and uniform in time for your shifts.”

“We know that this will mean a few more weeks of uncertainty for you as you wait for your offer. We are very hopeful that by the end of June we will have been able to offer you a role, and if not we will be in touch by then to let you know about further options to be involved in London 2012.”