What is procurement?
Procurement is the process of acquiring goods, works and services, covering both acquisitions from third parties and from in-house providers.
Procurement includes the negotiation of corporate contracts from the supply of routine goods and services through to the more complex partnership arrangements such as private/public partnerships, joint commissioning with another public sector organisation and construction projects.
The procurement process spans the whole cycle from identification of needs, through to the end of the service contract or the end of the useful life of an asset. In the context of a procurement process, obtaining “best value for money” means choosing the bid that offers “the optimum combination of whole life costs and benefits to meet the customer’s requirement”.
Read our guide on 'How to do Business with North Tyneside Council' which has been published to assist prospective suppliers who wish to bid for contracts with us. It has been produced by the Strategic Procurement Unit to provide an insight into our tendering procedures for supplies and service contracts.
What Strategic Procurement Do
Strategic Procurement is dedicated to the development of procurement processes, strategies and best practice as well as the delivery of goods, services and works procurements across the Council. For a list of the most commonly asked questions, please click on the FAQ’s link on the right hand side of the page.
The Unit is split into two teams and consists of:
Responsible for arranging and letting of contracts, Contract Management, Sourcing products and services.
Responsible for Procurement Strategy, e-procurement, spend analysis, analysis of contract management systems.
How we do it
The diagram above shows how procurement is organised within the council and the flow of information between the Strategic Procurement Unit and the directorates. This flow is achieved by holding regular meetings with the Procurement Board which has representatives from each directorate and Practitioners Forums made up of procurement practitioners within each directorate.
Each Directorate has a liaison officer with procurement responsibilities. The liaison officer will attend monthly Procurement Network Forum meetings and should be the first point of contact for procurement issues. .
The Procurement Board made up of Senior Manager’s from all Directorates will provide the management of the Procurement Network. The board will provide strategic direction and monitor the network.
What governs us?
As a Government body the Council is bound by procurement regulations, which set out how goods, services and works should be procured.
For further information on these regulations please click the links below:
- Contract Standing Orders (Updated January 2008)
- EU Directives