Cooperative Purchasing with Choice Facility Partners- Save Money and Time

Cooperative Purchasing with Choice Facility Partners is a valuable resource to school districts, colleges, universities, municipalities, counties and other governmental entities and non-profits. Choice Facility Partners is a cooperative purchasing agency that provides legal, competitively-bid facility contracts to governmental entities. Specializing in facility needs from the rooftop down, contract resource areas include renovation/remodeling through Job Order Contracting, energy conservation through energy purchase, energy audits and implementation of the recommendations, technology webstreaming and meeting management tools, roofing and building envelope assessment and  improvements, owner’s representative – budget controls, elevator services, other specialized technology and more. 

Governmental entities gain access to these cooperative purchasing contracts when the governing board signs an interlocal agreement with Choice Facility Partners/Harris County Department of Education. Choice Facility Partners is a division of Harris County Department of Education, which is not affiliated with the governing body of Harris County.

Develop value through quality partnerships with cooperative purchasing and Choice Facility Partners

Purchasing officers know that obtaining a competitively bid contract takes several steps – more than many end users of the needed product or service realize. Consequently on a weekly basis, purchasing officers have to juggle tasks to meet demands of other staff members who have come in with a need on a short deadline.

To meet these needs on a timely basis, purchasing officials can be proactive by signing an interlocal agreement with Choice Facility Partners. That will add cooperative purchasing capability to the purchasing department, without the expense of adding staff. The benefit to signing an interlocal agreement with Harris County Department of Education is that the commodity or service that may be needed in the future has already been competitively and legally bid through the cooperative purchasing process, giving governmental entities immediate access to needed resources.

Because Choice Facility Partners legally and competitively bids the contracts, cities, colleges and universities, counties, school districts and other governmental agencies may use the cooperative purchasing contracts under the Intergovernmental Code 791.

Recently, Choice Facility Partners added an experienced cooperative purchasing manager as assistant director, Carol R. Duval Greb joined the cooperative purchasing agency in late December. As a skilled manager of cooperative purchasing contracts with experience in contract development, Ms. Greb is managing legal, competitively-bid contracts, writing requests for proposals and assisting in the development of procedures for the rapidly growing cooperative purchasing agency.  Ms. Greb is board secretary on the board of the Center for Job Order Excellence; in 2005 she was the first woman elected to the board.

New contract partners and resource areas approved in the last few months include energy conservation services, modular buildings with an engineered, tensioned concrete slab foundation, additional job order contractors, elevator repair and maintenance, security systems with a biometric, fingerprint-based access control system, and capital program management. 

Additional RFPs are issued regularly to assist governing entities with all their facility needs. Before spending hours researching and developing RFPs, contact Choice Facility Partners staff about specific facility needs. And have the governing body sign the interlocal agreement to be prepared to take advantage of the many cooperative purchasing contracts available through Choice Facility Partners.

For more information on cooperative purchasing with Choice Facility Partners, contact 713-696-2122 or go to www.choicefacilitypartners.org .