With over $ 1 billion in third-party supplier spend, UMass has much sway in our local communities and with our supplier partners. The Unified Procurement Service Team, UPST, is uniquely positioned to collaborate with these supplier partners to meet the needs of our students, faculty, staff, and, by extension, our local communities.
UPST’s current focus on deepening supplier engagement and development due to the downstream benefits to our campuses and communities is a longer-term strategy to strengthen campus end-user interactions with the suppliers that provide the goods and services needed for our research and daily academic and administrative activities. We encourage you to be on the lookout for emails or adverts inviting you to supplier in-person workshops and roadshows being held on your campus over the next few months.
Maintenance, Repairs, and Operations (MRO) Program Supplier Roadshow
For people who do not know what we do with MRO, these are services and supplies needed to maintain our buildings/facilities and labs while supporting construction needs, covering HVAC, electrical, plumbing, air filtration, etc. UPST, in collaboration with your campus construction and facilities leads, partnered with the Massachusetts Higher Education Consortium (MHEC) to competitively source for MRO suppliers that meet UMass strategic objectives while providing the best cost and service benefits.
Over the past months, these MRO suppliers have engaged with our campus constituents, provided face-to-face opportunities, and learned about each campus's (department, lab, or building) needs. We aim to ensure a seamless transition from one supplier to another while maximizing the benefits of these new partnerships.
We want to thank UMass Chan Medical School, UMass Boston, and UMass Amherst for welcoming UPST, MHEC, and our MRO suppliers with open arms when the MRO Supplier Roadshow came to their campus. We have plans in the works to bring these roadshows to other campuses, and we also plan to showcase additional commodities.
We invite you to contact UPST to discuss how we can strengthen campus constituent ties with suppliers from your perspective.