Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Cooperative Procurement for Higher Ed

  • By Matt Peterson
  • 11/01/18

College and university leaders face the daunting task of navigating through rules and regulations that hinder the procurement process. This usually lengthy process requires committing limited time and resources. Then there’s the challenge of finding qualified bidders. Now, higher education institutions have the option to turn to cooperative purchasing networks to maximize resources and expedite the process.

These networks owe their growing popularity to their variety of labor-based and service offerings. Cooperative purchasing happens when one public agency competitively bids and establishes a contract available for other government agencies to “piggyback,” or adopt as their own. The combined leverage of multiple agencies’ budgets creates a price advantage and the piggybacking agency saves time and resources by leaning on existing contracts.

While traditional construction procurement has a reputation for being expensive and inefficient, purchasing construction services through a co-op can streamline this inflexible process. By utilizing contracts through co-ops, colleges and universities have access to competitively awarded local contractors who are available to start work immediately. They also see efficiencies across their schools increase as operational processes related to procurement become streamlined. Schools of all sizes and types save time and effort and avoid disputes and project delays, all while increasing budgetary control on small-to-large construction projects.

Acquiring goods and strategic services through cooperative purchasing networks is now regarded as a best practice. By enabling colleges and universities to trade the time and expense of traditional procurement for speed, efficiency, and the power of group buying, cooperative networks are offering a new alternative to decades-old processes.

This article originally appeared in the College Planning & Management November/December 2018 issue of Spaces4Learning.

About the Author

Matt Peterson handles Business Development – National Cooperatives for Gordian Group. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • Indiana University Launches Capital Campus in D.C.

    Indiana University recently held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new IU Capital Campus in Washington, D.C., according to university news. The eight-story facility will provide a central hub for the university’s existing programs and business operations based in D.C., uniting them under one roof and providing the opportunity to expand.

  • Classical building columns display digital data streams

    The Campus Nervous System: Why Facilities Risk Is Now a Leadership Issue in Higher Education

    Facility performance now intersects with safety, compliance, on-campus experience, institutional reputation, and financial resilience. That places it firmly on the leadership agenda.

  • California High School Opens New Classroom Building for 7th-, 8th-Graders

    Santa Rosa City Schools in Santa Rosa, Calif., recently announced the completion of a new classroom building for Piner High School. As the campus transitions to a Junior/Senior High School, the facility will play home to the school’s new population of seventh- and eighth-grade students.

  • Designing for Every Mind

    Learning environments have the power to shape not just what students know, but who they become. When a school is designed with genuine empathy—for the full range of ways students think, sense, and engage with the world—it becomes more than a building. It becomes a catalyst for growth, confidence, and belonging. That is the animating idea behind neurodiverse design, and it is one that is transforming how more architects and designers are thinking about school design.