February 2017
Hello,

As far as the Procurement Modernization goes, the SPCO has been working through comments from various stakeholders. Watch for introduction of the bill to committee soon! You can track the procurement modernization bill and other bills on the Colorado General Assembly website.
 
For personnel updates, we welcome John Chapman as our State Purchasing Manager. John was most recently a contract officer at Colorado Springs Utilities with prior experience as the procurement operations manager at the Colorado Department of Transportation. He was previously involved in the procurement process review (aka Procurement Modernization). John started with us on February 6th. Welcome to the team John!
 
Although we knew it was inevitable, we say goodbye to Sharon Meyer, who was here temporarily to help us with our pursuit of an emarket solution but then switched her focus to improvement of our price agreements on BIDS. Sharon was able to make some initial changes on BIDS which you will see mentioned in this newsletter and some will show up down the road. We appreciate her efforts over this last year and we will miss her.

Cindy Lombardi, CPPB
Director, State Purchasing and Contracts Office (SPCO)

2017 Advance Colorado Procurement Expo - Registration is Open!


Join the SPCO at Colorado's premier procurement event where agencies and vendors meet and learn how to do business together. This event is FREE for government agencies.  Please see the website for full details and registration.

We look forward to seeing you all on April 18th!

Questions? Contact:
SPCO Training

On-Site Statutory Violations Training can be scheduled for agencies.



Questions? Contact: 
Ruth Allender



SPCO Training Catalog

Final revisions are underway for the SPCO Training Catalog. This training reference will help managers identify opportunities to develop staff procurement skills.

"We prioritized identifying and categorizing training needs first," Director of State Purchasing & Contracts Cindy Lombardi explains. "This will help us clearly communicate with managers about the content and sequencing of SPCO training as we begin making classes available."

2017 Disability Set Aside Services

The State of Colorado has updated the 2017 services set aside list of self-certified nonprofit agencies who employ persons with severe and developmental disabilities.

Providing meaningful work opportunities and utilizing relevant job skills of persons with disabilities allows them to enhance their personal dignity and capacity for self-support, maximizes their personal independence and minimizes their dependence on government programs for their basic needs.     

Per statute, Colorado Department of Human Services accepts applications annually from nonprofit agencies who meet statutory requirements to become self-certified vendors. The list of self-certified vendors is then made available on the price agreement website under the category of  Disability Set Aside Services .
 
Any state agency that intends to solicit bids for a service included on this list, shall first solicit from the services set aside list. When  renewing or entering into a contract with a self-certified vendor, the state agency must report  to  state_report2spo@state.co.us .
 
Procurement Modernization efforts are in process to update and simplify the process for the Disability Set Aside Services. (Reference 24-103-801 thru 24-103-807 CRS)

State Price Agreement Updates
New
The Price Agreement Schedule, a list of current State Price Agreements issued by this office monthly and published on the SPCO website , now includes links to each Price Agreement page.  The Schedule is now also available on the State Price Agreement site, with instructions on how to search the Schedule by keyword, vendor name, etc. See. " AAA Searchable Price Agreement Schedule ".  It is located at the top of the list of Price Agreements on the site. We hope that the addition of this searchable resource will improve the State Price Agreement site experience for our users.

Airlines
The Southwest Airlines Agreement has been extended through 1/30/2018.

If you wish to use this Agreement, please go to BIDS and follow the instructions on the "Southwest Airlines General Info" attachment located under Files

DID YOU KNOW?
Adult learners learn and retain information better through participatory teaching methods (group discussions (50%),  practice by doing (75%) and teaching others (90%)) as opposed to passive teaching methods (lectures( 5%), reading (10%), audio visual (20%) and demonstrations (30%)).  Numbers in parenthesis are the retention percentages experienced by adult learners in various learning situations.

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