13 July 2018 
Emma Keenan, Procurement Specialist
In June 2018 the Procurement and Insurance division of the University of Birmingham achieved both Flexible Framework Level 5 and PMA Superior status.
Over the last few years the team have sought to drive improvements in; Leadership, Governance, Sustainable Procurement, Demand and Risk Management and Performance Measurement and are now demonstrating 80% value for money performance under the Procurement Maturity Assessment (PMA) criteria. Just 9 University Procurement operations in the country have achieved Superior (upper quartile) status, with just a few of those in the “very large scale” universities category. The University commenced its PMA journey in 2014 when it was classified as “tactical”, it moved to “planned” in 2016 before achieving “superior” this year.
Between 2014 and 2016 the University improved it's position on the Flexible Framework from Level 1 to Level 4 and we are pleased to confirm that last month, the institituion obtained the highest status at Level 5. Jonathan Jones, Director of Procurement and Insurance at the University explained "The key to our achivements has been to develop performance targets around delivery of sustainable outcomes and also giving these the same status as savings targets"
There are currently only 2 Universities performing at Level 5.
So what do these achievements mean for service users?
Jonathan added “this is a really exciting time for procurement within the University Sector, there are now lots of opportunities for procurement officers to demonstrate what can be achieved in both value for money and generating innovative ideas”
You can meet Jonathan at the HEPA conference this year, or contact him directly if you have any queries.
