For Suppliers
North Western Universities Purchasing Consortium Limited (NWUPC) is a not for profit company owned by its Higher Education Full Member Institutions, it's main aim is "To provide a structure for higher education institutions mutually to secure value for money in matters relating to the purchasing of goods and services".
NWUPC is one of 6 regional higher education purchasing consortia in the UK and is made up of Higher Education Institutions and associate members from Further Education and other Public Sector Bodies.
NWUPC is responsible for letting EU compliant Framework Agreements. All agreements are let following a competitive tendering exercise and are tendered through the European Procurement Directives. Each tender document states the institutions/regions that may participate in the resulting agreement as well as the evaluation criteria that will be applied to the Agreement as well as the overall Agreement value.
In accordance with the European Purchasing Directives notification of the tender process is placed in the Official Journal of the European Union. This is a daily electronic publication and can be viewed at http://ted.publications.eu.int. Each notice is coded according to the commodity being tendered and some organisations provide a bespoke alerting service for all notices falling into the commodity areas that your company is interested in tendering for.
Our website lists the agreements that we currently have in place and when they are due to expire. A tendering exercise normally takes nine to twelve months so if you are particularly interested in tendering for one of our agreements it is wise to look out for the notice during this period. All our tenders are now conducted on-line through In-Tend.
Contracting activities are lead by our 10 Commodity Groups which cover the following areas:
- Administration and Professional Services
- Audio Visual
- Catering
- Computer
- Domestic Supplies and Services
- Estates
- Furniture and Soft Furnishings
- Laboratory Supplies
- Stationery and Office Equipment
- Telecommunications
Each Commodity Group meets 3 times a year and the meetings are hosted by our Member Institutions on a rotating basis. The primary role of each commodity group is to review existing and potential Framework Agreements.