Procurement

The college is a member of Advanced Procurement for Universities and Colleges (APUC) Ltd which works with universities and colleges in setting up framework agreements on behalf of the Further and Higher Education sectors in Scotland.

When possible, we use existing agreements competitively tendered through Scottish and UK procurement consortiums/centres of excellence. This includes access to frameworks from the other national and sectoral centres of expertise in Scotland and the UK.

When established agreements are not available, we procure through competitive tendering, using Public Contracts Scotland (PCS or PCS-Tender), ensuring compliance with the following thresholds:

For PCS, suppliers are required to complete a brief self-registration process through the portal.

Our procurement strategy sets out the procurement direction of the college. We review and update this in line with local, regional, sectoral and national procurement initiatives.

View the most recent procurement strategy (April 2021).

View our contracts register.

Sustainable procurement is ‘a process whereby organisations meet their needs for goods, services, works and utilities in a way that achieves value for money on a whole-life basis and generates benefits not only to the organisation, but also to society, the economy and the environment’.

Sustainability and social responsibility are important to us. This includes fair and ethical trade, minimising environmental impact and promoting equality, diversity and inclusion.

We are committed to achieving sustainable procurement by:

• committing to the Suppliers’ Charter, a joint statement between public sector procurement and businesses to facilitate access to public sector procurement opportunities
• considering whole-life costs of goods and services procured
• considering the environmental and social impact of goods and services in the tender process
• committing to building carbon reduction into the tendering process. This recognises that it is important to adjust working practices to enable us to reduce the carbon footprint, to have targets for reducing indirect emissions of greenhouse gases, and to report on how we will align spending and use of resources with emission reduction efforts
• communicating and promoting sustainability to all employees and service providers and ensuring that it is included in the tender process where appropriate
• promoting circular procurement which sets out an approach to green public procurement. This includes paying special attention to ‘the purchase of works, goods or services that seek to contribute to the closed energy and materials loops with the supply chains, while minimising and, in the best case avoiding, negative environmental impacts and waste creation across the whole life-cycle’. This will be embedded into the procurement policy and processes
• ensuring community benefits are considered in all contracts
• ensuring all potential contractors understand and sign up to the APUC Sustain Supply Chain Code of Conduct or have an equivalent policy
• ensuring that all suppliers once contracted with SLC, once an invite has been sent, to register on the APUC supply chain management (SCM) tool. This has been created to assist with planning SCM meetings, and is a repository to upload and host any relevant documentation from the meetings for future reference

We use PECOS for electronically procuring goods and services. This allows routine purchases to be processed electronically from requisition to payment.

We use the PCS online electronic tendering system, for all requirements above £50,000.

You can download our general terms and conditions for ordering and purchasing.

Specific terms and conditions for major contracts are supplied to suppliers as necessary.

We issue purchase orders for all requirements. You should not provide any goods, services or works without this.

The Supplier Development Programme (SDP) is a partnership of local authorities, the Scottish Government and other public bodies that work together to provide business support in all aspects of tendering. There are training courses for businesses looking to tender for public contracts in Scotland. There’s more information about this on the Supplier Development Programme website.

See also The Supplier Journey for guidance on how to bid for public sector contracts.