The management of teaching and research equipment in Scottish higher education institutions : report / by the Comptroller and Auditor General.

  • Great Britain. National Audit Office.
Date:
1996
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: The management of teaching and research equipment in Scottish higher education institutions : report / by the Comptroller and Auditor General. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Managing equipment through the life-cycle 18 ig 20 21 oe THE MANAGEMENT OF TEACHING AND RESEARCH EQUIPMENT IN SCOTTISH HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS e improve the information available to purchasing co-ordinators on planned equipment purchases by departments. Although most institutions have strengthened the central purchasing function, some /needed to do more to encourage professional purchasing practice, including adopting the practices recommended in the earlier National Audit Office report. There were a few lapses in procedures to secure propriety and control. Only one of the eight institutions examined provided purchasing training to a subtantial proportion of departmental purchasers. The need for such training was emphasised by the shortcomings in purchasing practice found within departments at other institutions. The National Audit Office concluded that some or most institutions needed to do more to implement the action points in the earlier Nation] Audit report, and in particular to: e establish within existing committee structures an appropriate high-level forum for consideration of purchasing policies and procedures and to track the impacts secured from improved arrangements; e require the submission of an annual strategy and report on purchasing to the senior management group to keep them apprised of progress and future plans; e assign their internal auditors to scrutinise the purchasing control environment and examine whether value for money has been obtained from purchasing; and e ensure that staff authorised to make purchases are suitably trained. Departments do not routinely measure the extent to which equipment is used. The National Audit Office found that many of the items they examined were used intensively, although in almost a third of cases there was significant spare capacity. There was extensive sharing of equipment within departments and good examples of equipment being shared with outside bodies, but less evidence of sharing among departments. The National Audit Office concluded that most institutions could seek to use equipment more, in particular by: e formally monitoring equipment use; and e developing mechanisms to encourage the sharing of spare capacity and ensuring that equipment is not purchased by departments without an appraisal of the scope for sharing with other departments. Most of the academic departments examined undertake as much maintenance as they can in-house. At no institution was the cost of this approach compared with that of using contract maintenance to gauge which provided the most