The university’s Procurement Team has been nominated for two awards in this year’s Government Organisation (GO) Awards.

The UK GO Excellence in Public Procurement Awards are all about showcasing organisations that lead the way in public procurement best practice across all UK nations.

This year, the university’s Procurement Team has been selected as finalists in two categories: Social Value and the coveted Team of the Year 2022.

To win their place as nominees, the team have shown emerging talent across the board in their dedication to improve customer service and satisfaction over the year of 2021.

Notably during this time period, one member of the team was a runner up for The Procurement Hero Award in The 2020 Amazon Business Exchange Awards, and another member was awarded a Vice Chancellors medal for being part of the team to set up our own Covid-19 testing centres for students – as well as managing the critical sourcing of PPE materials.

The Procurement team also demonstrated exceptional performance and attitude throughout a challenging period, as evidenced by the ‘Fix the Engine’ project, which saw more than 20 different projects feed into an overarching transformation program.

For the Social Value category, the team have been key contributors to the university work on modern slavery to become a slavery-free campus, which is a pioneering piece of work and that is being showcased across the public sector in the UK, US and Australia. You can see more about this work here.

Head of Procurement at the university, Rosalie Parkin, said: “I am incredibly proud of the ambition and resilience shown by the Procurement team during 20/21.

Despite a number of significant challenges, including Brexit bringing in additional time, cost and complications to overseas deliveries and multiple supply chain constraints in critical areas due to Covid, the team have pushed themselves to deliver BAU activities as well as continuously improving processes, policies and ways of working by listening to feedback from our community.

We are extremely pleased to be shortlisted as finalists in both categories and recognised for the significant work delivered to date”.

The Procurement Team also join fellow nominee, Final-Year PhD Researcher, Tien Thuy Quach – who has been nominated in the Individual Achievement of the Year category.

Winners of this year’s GO Awards will be handed their awards at a celebratory event on Wednesday 25 May 2022 at the Hilton in Birmingham.

Find out more about the GO Awards.