PAEC Cooperative State Purchasing Program to Partner with Florida Purchasing Group

CHIPLEY, Fla. (June 12, 2013) -- The Cooperative Purchasing Program administered by the Panhandle Area Educational Consortium (PAEC) and the Washington County School Board (WCSB) have joined the Florida Purchasing Group, an online procurement system that gives vendors instant access to Bids, Requests for Proposals (RFP's), Quotes and Amendments that are all designed to organize and streamline information on procurements.

The PAEC Cooperative State Purchasing Program is a member of the Association of Educational Purchasing Agencies (AEPA) and managed by the Consortium. As a member of AEPA, Florida's schools, other governmental agencies, and non-profits, save significant dollars by purchasing goods and services through the combined purchasing volume of 26 states representing over 25 million students. All bids follow competitive bidding requirements.

The Panhandle Area Educational Consortium, located in Chipley, is Florida's oldest regional educational consortium and currently serves 13 small, rural school districts in the Florida Panhandle. Since the creation of PAEC in 1967, member school districts have benefited from shared services made available through leading edge technology. WCSD serves as the fiscal agent and district of record for PAEC.

BidNet's Florida Purchasing Group connects 442 departments from 19 local government agencies and provides a bid notification system for vendors looking to do business. The new alliance provides vendors with convenient access to bid information for PAEC, WCSB , and all other participating government agencies on the system. In addition to Florida Purchasing Group, BidNet manages 14 government purchasing groups throughout the country providing over 800 local government agencies a purchasing and vendor management solution.

PAEC and the WCSB invite all local vendors to join Florida Purchasing Group to receive access to its solicitations.

Benefits of registering on http://www.floridabidsystem.com include: 

According to Rick Everitt, Program Coordinator for Florida Statewide Cooperative Purchasing at PAEC ";Our vendors now have centralized access to bid opportunities from any statewide bid or national AEPA Bid managed by the Florida Cooperative Purchasing Program."

For more information about the Florida Statewide Cooperative Purchasing at PAEC please contact Rick Everitt at 800-873-7232.