Annoyed at mandatory suppliers
Expensive and slow to boot
Door Rob van der Wal
By Rob van der Wal
Rob van der Wal
Rob begon als student-redacteur bij UKrant en is sinds mei 2023 terug als vaste medewerker. Hij schrijft nieuwsberichten, achtergrondartikelen – met een voorkeur voor wetenschap – en houdt zich bezig met internationaliseringszaken. Daarnaast werkt Rob als freelance wetenschapsjournalist. In zijn vrije tijd is hij drummer, radiomaker en moestuinier.For its new permanent exhibition Masterminds, about groundbreaking research at the UG, the University Museum needed a very specific size touch screen. ‘We saw that Coolblue had it in stock’, says Mariska de Bone, exhibition project leader and communications adviser at the museum.
There was just one problem: they weren’t allowed to just buy stuff from stores like Coolblue. For all audiovisual products such as screens, audio equipment, and interactive whiteboards, the UG has contracts with specific companies. It is legally obliged to have these contracts: governments and public institutions such as universities have to go through certain procedures to contract the supply of products and services. It’s called contracting.
The screen that the University Museum needed was part of such a contract. So the museum sent a list of necessities to the UG’s audiovisual department, which was in charge of ordering them from the contracted partners. And then they waited. For six weeks.
Finally, a van arrived carrying the exact touch screen they needed. The audiovisual department had ordered it from Coolbue, says De Bone. ‘I was like, we could’ve just ordered it ourselves.’
Multiple quotes
There is an obligation to contract European businesses for all services and products over 221,000 euros, such as cleaning, office furniture, and printing. There’s also an internal limit of 40,000 euros. If a printing job or hiring a freelancer costs less than that and no supplier has been contracted yet, departments can decide for themselves who to use. Anything over that requires asking at least three to five different parties to send in their quotes.
De Bone says that the contracted partners are great when asked to supply products they actually have. ‘But our biggest problem is that those partners rarely have the things a museum needs, because they weren’t selected for that.’
It sucks we have to pay three or four times as much for promotional materials
This can lead to delays that get in the way of University Museum operations, which faces hard deadline on exhibitions. ‘Our Kaleidoscope exhibition was supposed to last until halfway through November’, says De Bone. ‘But now we’ve been forced to extend it beyond the Christmas break.’
Why? The exhibition rooms need new floors, and the parties contracted with the UG won’t be available until January, and the job will take three weeks. The museum will have to close down in its entirety for the duration. ‘If we were free to choose, we could have contacted several companies for a bid’, she says. ‘But we can’t.’
Then there are the service costs. These are fairly high, especially considering the University Museum’s small budget. ‘So the fact that the cost for promotional materials is three or four times higher than if we were to order it ourselves kind of sucks.’
Very involved
Faculties also occasionally get annoyed at the contracting issue. Geraldine Gambier, management assistant at ENTEG, heaves a sigh when Diversity Travel, the travel agency the UG contracted a few years ago through a tender procedure, is mentioned. ‘It’s worse than the one we had before.’
Every work-related trip she books for staff has to go through this agency. ‘But you can’t just book a trip’, says Gambier. ‘You have to ask for a quote first.’
Regularly, the trip I wanted to book has sold out
Most of the time, she does this via email, even though there’s an online tool. ‘But that requires the person I’m booking for to give permission and fill out much of the data themselves’, says Gambier. ‘It’s a very involved process, so no one uses that tool.’
But the travel agency, which is located in Dublin, Ireland, often takes a day and a half to respond to email. Gambier and her colleagues then have to approve the quote. It usually takes at least three days to book a single trip.
‘Regularly, the trip I wanted to book has sold out by that time’, she says. ‘It’s a terrible way of doing things, but then again, it’s not my money they’re spending.’
Useful
But it’s not all bad, emphasises Gambier; many procedures are very smooth. ‘Office supplier Lyreco works fine, for instance. They do fast delivery, provide a nifty shortlist for the most popular products, and their customer service is great.’
Gambier understands why the contracting procedure is useful. ‘If everyone would just order from whatever place works best for them, the UG’s accounting team would be drowning in invoices.’
It would also cost the university a lot more money, says Luuk Tuinder, purchasing manager at the UG. A few years ago, processing a single invoice cost 45 euros. As such, people really shouldn’t be buying products from non-contracted parties.
Yet, employees regularly visit stores like the MediaMarkt to buy equipment instead of ordering it from one of the suppliers selected by the UG. In addition to delivery times, they often cite that prices are lower. ‘Sure, things can always be cheaper’, says Tuinder. ‘But employees also spend time travelling to IKEA or a different store. They have to take that into account as well.’
80/20 rule
But, he admits: ‘I can’t prevent it entirely. Trying to control everything simply doesn’t work.’ He prefers the 80/20 rule: the most expensive products have to always be bought from the contracted suppliers.
If they run out of work, the suppliers will start questioning our contracts
It’s the managers’ task to make sure this happens. ‘They should be telling people that they won’t sign off on an invoice for a set of IKEA shelves when we have a contract with Vepa.’
This is also intended to maintain a good relationship with those suppliers. ‘If at some point people are buying products through other channels to such an extent that our suppliers aren’t seeing the agreed-upon numbers of products being ordered from them, that’s a bad thing.’
Fortunately, Tuinder emphasises, this hasn’t actually happened yet. ‘There is plenty of work for our suppliers, and sometimes they’re even short on people. But if they ever ran out of work, these same suppliers would start questioning the contracts we have with them.’
Specific equipment
Another, more common argument against the contracting is that in some cases, it would be quite useless to pit suppliers against each other for the best offer. The Faculty of Science and Engineering often needs such specific equipment that there’s only one suitable supplier that has the requirement measuring equipment or freezers.
‘In that case, we start what’s known as a unique procedure’, Tuinder explains. They draw up a list of specifications required from a product and ask which one of their suppliers has it. If there’s only one, the equipment can be ordered directly from that company.
If there is more than one company that can provide the equipment, they start a regular tender procedure. ‘I’ve seen that happen two or three times in the year since I started working here’, says Tuinder.
What if the companies can’t supply every single product required? Then they should find a subcontractor who can, says Tuinder. ‘But don’t go trying to find a company yourself. That’s what the contract purchasing department is for.’