The University of Toronto’s Procurement Services was awarded National First Prize in this year’s CAUBO (Canadian Association of University Business Officers) Quality and Productivity Awards for their innovative new negotiable RFP process developed in collaboration with the Procurement Law Office.
The award winning project is described in more detail by the U of T’s Procurement Services in their Press Release:
“University of Toronto’s new Negotiable RFP is a public procurement method with a state-of-the art legal mechanism developed in collaboration with The Procurement Law Office. This innovation allows unprecedented flexibility for clients to tailor deliverables to best meet their project needs. Prior to the Negotiable RFP, the conventional procurement process locked the buyer into an agreement that could not change. More importantly, the process has resulted in significant negotiated enhancements above and beyond solutions proposed by the market. This is a significant advantage especially in highly intensive research environments such as U of T, where technologies often change faster than the RFP process life cycle.”
The results were significant:
“One year after implementation, results far exceeded expectations. Process compliance rose from 50% to 99%, the number of RFPs submitted rose from 70 to 113 (a 60% increase in use of the RFP process), and hard dollar savings generated by the negotiation step amounted to $1.1 million.”
Congratulations to the University of Toronto for this accomplishment. To learn more about the project, watch this video from U of T’s Procurement Services, The Negotiable RFP in Action at the University of Toronto.
