APUC (Advanced Procurement for Universities and Colleges) Limited is the procurement centre of expertise for all of Scotland universities and colleges, established initially in response to the McClelland Report: 'Review of Public Procurement in Scotland', which made recommendations for public procurement reform.
APUC's work covers a wide scope of all relevant aspects of social, ethical, human rights and environmental (with a strong focus on the addressing the climate emergency) supply chain impacts. The Responsible Procurement resources within APUC are there to both support the APUC core team in addressing these matters, but also with a strong focus on supporting all procurement staff and other stakeholders based in member institutions, and other relevant sector / cross-sector groups in maximising effectiveness in this area.
APUC's core vision is "To maximise the value of Scotland's investment in further and higher education by working in partnership with institutions to support and enable sustainable innovation in procurement and shared service optimisation".
APUC has become the first full consortium member of Electronics Watch, a European organisation set up to drive improvements in labour conditions of IT supply chains, and provides a structure compliant with EU public procurement legislation to investigate, monitor and address labour issues in IT products supplied to public buyers.
 | 34,000 Employees |
 | 3,850m Turnover |
 | 2019 Date joined |
Ricarda Bieke
College Services (East) and Responsible Procurement Manager
More information? Email procurement@iclei.org
APUC aims to be a leader, on behalf of client institutions, in driving forward the sustainable procurement agenda, delivering best value for institutions whilst being committed to embedding and effecting advanced sustainable procurement.
The university and college sectors, particularly in Scotland, have been at the forefront of procurement collaboration for many years. Collaboration has yielded significant savings for the sectors prior to the formation of APUC and increasingly since.
Responsible procurement has a wide scope covering all relevant aspects of social, ethical, human rights and environmental (with a strong focus on the addressing the climate emergency) supply chain impacts. The Responsible Procurement resources within APUC are there to both support the APUC core team in addressing these matters, but also with a strong focus on supporting all procurement staff and other stakeholders based in member institutions, and other relevant sector / cross-sector groups, in maximising effectiveness in this area.
APUC, with the help of its client institutions' collaborative buying power, strives to bring about positive impacts on supply chain sustainability, reaching as far into its supply chain as reasonably possible.
APUC is committed to working sustainably and to support the sustainable procurement duty brought into force by the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014. To meet these obligations and to demonstrate APUC's commitment to achieving economic, social and environmental benefits in its procurement activity, APUC has developed policies and tools and launched a web portal to assess its supply chain. APUC encourages SMEs, third sector businesses and supported businesses to bid for contracts.
APUC has developed an interactive web portal called Sustain which allows its supply base to be assessed against the 3 areas of its Code of Conduct:
The portal allows suppliers across our sector to complete and store sustainability compliance data. It is free to use for suppliers and supplier responses will be verified by SA 8000 advanced auditors and further investigations carried out where required. A summary of results is available to view on the website as and when completed. Suppliers only require to complete the questionnaire once every 3 years for all their respective contracts in the HE and FE sector, regardless of how many contracts or institutions that they are linked to (although the system allows a 'continual improvement' approach to be recognised also).
APUC is developing Carbon and Sustainability Category Guides in the sector to target carbon reduction and sustainability in the supply chain. These guides aim to help fully explore the possibilities as part of the strategy development, tendering and contract management stages of the procurement cycle.
Key sectors for APUC responsible and sustainable procurement are:
For further information on the activities of bpost visit their website:
or email procurement@iclei.org
Consortium member of Electrics Watch, driving improvements of labour conditions in global IT supply chains
