Joint council procurement program continues at PACE

Senior management from both Aberdeenshire Council and Aberdeen City Council met on Friday 11 July as the Procurement Achieving Customer Excellence (PACE) programme moved onto its next stage.

The programme will see the two councils collaborate, to identify opportunities to improve procurement efficiency, avoid waste and develop commercial initiatives that will benefit both organisations.

Chief Executives Colin Mackenzie and Angela Scott, Directors and Heads of Service from both councils attended the presentation and workshop event organised by the Commercial and Procurement Service and Scotland Excel, the Centre of Procurement Expertise for the local government sector in Scotland.

Key information highlighted at the event included the significant similarity of the two councils’ spending profiles, the number of shared suppliers between the two and the overuse of one-time suppliers.

The heads of service from both councils were split into groups and tasked with creating and developing long and short term ideas, initiatives and projects that will be taken forward as part of the PACE programme. The Commercial and Procurement Service Team has supported the development of these group ideas which will be presented to the Programme Review Panel in August. The panel includes both Chief Executives, Head of Commercial & Procurement Services Craig Innes and Stephen Brannagan from Scotland Excel.

Craig Innes, said: “This isn’t about simply ‘buying stuff’. Collaborative contracts, information sharing and cross-organisational work can ensure efficiencies are made across both councils.

“It’s not simply cost-cutting either. Chief officers are being tasked with looking at opportunities for income generation that can come from developing a commercial approach to how we manage our assets and services. A shared programme of this magnitude is a real pathfinder across public sector Scotland and will place both councils at the forefront of addressing the austerity pressures facing the public sector in innovative ways.”.