Update on the restructure of UA Procurement
October 17, 2019
— by John Hebard, director of procurement and contract services
With the retirement of UAA’s director of procurement services, Mary Beth Schenk, on
Oct. 11, the consolidation of procurement functions into a single reporting structure
is now complete. With this restructuring there is now a single department with 12
employees located in both Fairbanks and Anchorage. This staff will manage all procurements
across the system larger than $25,000 as well as all other procurements that cannot
be made using a procurement card or performed by distributed procurement staff. The
combined staff is already working together to align processes wherever it makes sense
and, most importantly, to seek economies of scale and cost savings, by establishing
contracts that benefit all rather than a single campus.
While staff in Fairbanks and Anchorage have begun to work together in order to share
expertise and seek savings opportunities, I have decided that it will best serve our
users in the near term to have the contracting officers in Anchorage continue to serve
UAA and the contracting officers in Fairbanks continue to serve UAF and SW. Therefore,
if you have questions or concerns regarding specific procurements, please work with
the contracting officer in your location that is currently providing your service.
Also, departments are asked to continue to enter requisitions and provide backup documentation
to the same campus procurement location that has served them previously. For staff
at UAS, procurement routing and processes will also remain the same as previous. If
any of this changes moving forward, we will communicate it out to the campus communities
with advance notice.
The procurement card administration staff in Fairbanks and Anchorage have also begun
to work together to consolidate processes and provide backup support. We will extend
similar support to UAS in the near future. For the time being please work with your
current campus card administrators for services related to the issuance, administration
and audit of procurement cards and travel cards.
As stated in previous communications, all active delegations of procurement authority
remain in place unless modified or revoked by the CPO. This includes procurement technicians
and distributed staff with delegated procurement authority. If you have questions
regarding consolidation or concerns regarding your quality of service please contact
me at jahebard@alaska.edu. Thank you for your support.