In 2015, the University of Tennessee System was invited to participate in a process to identify possible opportunities to reduce costs for the operation of all state facilities, including higher education. UT President Joe DiPietro asked the leadership of each campus to work with JLL to enable the company to make proposals for facilities operations and determine what is in the best interest of the campuses. Each campus will present its decision to the board of trustees at the UT Board of Trustees meeting Nov. 3 in Knoxville.
As a part of this process, JLL provided the University of Tennessee Health Science Center with a business case indicating the estimates for savings to the Health Science Center campus would approximate $1.7 million annually. The most significant of the savings, approximately $1.2 million, would be derived from leveraging procurement across all available services.
Because the projected savings are focused on procurement and our overall satisfaction with our internally managed staff performance and our currently outsourced comprehensive landscape services, the Health Science Center has elected not to participate in the outsourcing initiative proposed by JLL. We will continue to work with our campus and system staff on ways to generate savings in procurement across the board.
In further consideration of the JLL proposal and in light of our current outsourcing of mechanical services to external vendors, the Health Science Center has elected to, as a part of a consortium with the University of Memphis and Southwest Tennessee Community College, afford JLL the opportunity to either provide these services currently provided to external mechanical services vendors and/or through leveraged procurement, reducing this approximate $6 million expenditure to the Health Science Center.