Colleges and universities have faced difficult choices in recent years, including layoffs, program restructuring, and budgetary cutbacks that have changed operations. Despite these challenges, many institutions have maintained MRO procurement.
While routine maintenance has generally continued, replacements and renewals of facilities are now facing a significant backlog, and funding isn’t keeping up. The 2025 State of Facilities in Higher Education report estimates that the backlog of renewal needs across U.S. campuses now exceeds $140 per gross square foot, growing by about 2% year over year. Despite increased spending, there’s a 32% gap in MRO procurement, between the money spent and what’s needed to overcome the deficit.
That means increased need for building supplies, equipment maintenance, and general building repairs. Against this backdrop, facilities managers and procurement teams are trying to control costs without cutting back on quality. It’s a tall order, especially when you consider that facilities get continuous (and increasing) use. One study shows that more than half of higher education leaders say they expect an increase in facilities use in 2025.
In this guide, we’ll explain strategies for improving MRO management, ways to reduce maintenance costs, negotiating tips with MRO suppliers, and how you can leverage cooperative contracts to save time and money.
MRO covers a wide range of products and services to keep facilities running smoothly. Janitorial supplies, light bulbs and electrical fixtures, HVAC filters, plumbing parts, and other industrial supplies are just part of the equation, along with tools and repair parts. It takes an investment to have the necessary items on hand when needed, and it can be easy to overspend. However, not having what you need when situations arise can get extremely expensive, especially if you have to pay for emergency services or expedited deliveries.
MRO is different from capital projects, which include new construction or significant upgrades. MRO is more about the smaller-scale purchases used to extend the lifespan of facilities and equipment. Despite this, the volume and frequency of MRO procurement make it a major part of higher education budgets.
Let’s take a closer look at what facilities management typically includes.
Category | Examples | Why It Matters |
Building supplies | Roofing materials, hardware, structural fasteners, drywall, windows, and doors | Essential for maintaining aging structures and safety compliance |
Janitorial supplies | Cleaning chemicals, paper products, waste receptacles, hygiene dispensers | Supports cleanliness, health standards, and student satisfaction |
Industrial supplies | Motors, belts, valves, bearings, sensors, fasteners, lubricants | Keeps mechanical systems running and minimizes downtime |
Equipment maintenance | Replacement parts, HVAC filters, calibration tools, service kits | Extends the lifespan of utility equipment |
Nearly all of these fall under the category of indirect procurement, covering purchases that aren’t directly related to teaching students or doing research, but are critical for supporting the core mission.
Such expenditures don’t always get the scrutiny that large-scale or big-ticket spending does. They’re often referred to as tail spend, low-value purchases that may only account for 20% of total spending and is spread across a large number of MRO suppliers, resulting in significant administrative overhead. Often, these purchases are spread across departments or campuses and may not be centralized, making accountability more challenging.
Efficient MRO procurement looks at total lifecycle costs, maximizing spending across the life of facilities and equipment. Rather than reactive buying, strategic sourcing is a big part of the solution, managing how and when parts and supplies are specified, purchased, and maintained across all departments.
Let’s look at seven key strategies to manage your MRO program, streamline indirect procurement, and reduce unnecessary tail spend.
Define sourcing policies, approval workflows, and MRO supplier sourcing. Establish who buys what, and under what conditions, to minimize off-contract purchasing.
Categorize suppliers based on how critical they are and their spend levels to focus on high-value categories and those that are high-profile maintenance items.
Reduce part variability across campuses wherever possible. When you have consistent specifications for items like filters, bulbs, and fasteners, you can often negotiate better pricing. This can also reduce the number of replacement parts you need to keep on hand.
Maintain digital catalogs of approved products and MRO suppliers for industrial supplies and janitorial supplies to enforce quality standards. You can also reduce the amount of tail spend that goes to non-contract suppliers that lose the pricing benefits of contracted purchases.
Set acceptable thresholds for decentralized purchasing, supported by automated approvals and guided buying tools that prevent maverick spend.
Use eProcurement systems and punchout catalogs to centralize data, automate workflows, and consolidate data for analysis.
Facilities, procurement, and finance teams must all be on the same page when it comes to MRO procurement. And you need the data to track spend, supplier performance, and inventory levels.
When something breaks down, it creates problems downstream. An HVAC breakdown or burst pipe in a bathroom becomes more than just a nuisance. If you don’t have the supplies on hand, emergency repairs can get expensive quickly. A big part of lowering equipment maintenance costs is optimizing sourcing and planning purchases for preventative maintenance to avoid crisis buying.
Beyond just preventative maintenance, predictive maintenance relies on sensor data and algorithms to anticipate equipment failures. This helps create a realistic timetable for MRO procurement and replacements to avoid downtime and emergency repairs.
Combining spend across departments, with standardized products, helps you achieve volume discounts. Centralizing your MRO suppliers also streamlines procurement, allowing you to unify contract management and focus your attention where it matters the most.
Just as consolidating your buying can achieve greater purchasing power with MRO suppliers, leveraging cooperative contracts can deliver significant savings. The 6,000+ member institutions that are part of E&I Cooperative Services often see cost reductions in the 10-15% range when using competitively solicited cooperative agreements.
When procurement of building supplies, janitorial supplies, and industrial supplies aligns with your maintenance planning and asset lifecycle management, you reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO).
Negotiating strong contracts with MRO suppliers can shift you from fixing costs later to managing money smarter over time. Strategies include:
When you execute on these strategies, you can transform MRO procurement from fragmented transactions into a high-performance supply chain that supports resilience and controls costs.
Supplier performance and partner quality determine the success of any MRO strategy. Here are four key areas of supplier management that impact higher education institutions.
Focus Area | Description | Key Outcomes |
Supplier selection | Evaluate suppliers on capability, compliance, diversity, sustainability, and service reliability. | Ensures quality, consistency, and alignment with institutional values. |
Contracting best practices | Use standardized terms, define delivery logistics, and explore vendor-managed inventory (VMI) options. | Reduces stockouts, improves logistics efficiency, and enhances supplier accountability. |
Performance management | Monitor KPIs like on-time delivery, defect rates, and responsiveness; conduct quarterly business reviews. | Identifies improvement opportunities and enforces accountability. |
Relationship development | Treat suppliers as strategic partners, collaborating on innovation and sustainability initiatives. | Fosters long-term value creation and tailored solutions in campus operations. |
Investing in supplier relationships is often undervalued by procurement teams. However, developing deep relationships often leads to innovative solutions and contracts that are tailored to align with your unique needs.
In MRO, technology plays an increasingly important role. Building management systems (BMS) oversee connected systems and flag potential problems before failures occur. Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) centralize asset management, work order, inventory, and maintenance activities.
These systems, along with your MRO procurement digitization, create more coordination to make MRO activities more efficient.
Data is key to managing your direct and indirect procurement. Your process should provide you with visibility into your MRO categories, tail spend, contract compliance, and maverick spending. This data lets you source and plan more effectively.
It’s also worth taking the time to do a holistic review of all of your procurement activities to find areas to consolidate, bring more spend under contract, or leverage cooperative contracts for greater savings. E&I Cooperative Services offers a no-cost Strategic Spend Assessment (SSA) for member institutions.
You need critical parts on hand to avoid shutdowns, and you need an appropriate amount of inventory to avoid shortages. However, that’s just part of your inventory management strategy. Governance should include classifying inventory. For example:
High-performing procurement organizations see cost savings, as a percentage of spend, that are more than double their peers. How do they do it? By actively managing procurement with a structured and strategic approach. These institutions manage building supplies, janitorial supplies, and industrial supplies as interconnected categories.
An MRO program follows a clear roadmap:
You will also benefit from quantifying the total value of your MRO procurement process. E&I Cooperative Services’ Economic Benefit ModelTM (EBM) helps you quantify cost reduction, cost avoidance, and incentive and revenue opportunities in E&I contracts.
E&I Cooperative Services is the only member-owned nonprofit sourcing cooperative focused exclusively on education procurement. With more than 6,000 member institutions and hundreds of competitively solicited contracts, E&I provides a streamlined pathway for colleges and universities to modernize their MRO procurement and facilities supply management.
Through its national cooperative contracts, E&I delivers immediate access to competitively solicited, compliant pricing across categories such as building supplies, janitorial supplies, and industrial supplies, helping institutions streamline their procurement and bypass lengthy RFPs. E&I’s cooperative approach supports your strategic goals, including reducing tail spend, enhancing supplier diversity, and embedding sustainability standards directly into your operations.
How do you consolidate MRO suppliers?
Conduct a spend analysis, segment suppliers by category, and standardize parts. Then, consolidate suppliers to leverage volume discounts and utilize cooperative agreements to bring more spend under contract.
How do you measure MRO savings?
Track reductions in off-contract spend, emergency repair costs, and total cost per maintenance event.
How much do colleges spend on facilities?
It varies at every institution. The most current study shows colleges spend about 16.4% of their total budget on maintenance and operations.
What is the difference between direct and indirect procurement?
Direct procurement supports core educational operations, like education supplies or lab equipment. Indirect procurement covers goods and services like janitorial supplies, maintenance parts, and facilities management resources.
How do cooperative purchasing contracts benefit MRO procurement?
Cooperative contracts combine the purchasing power of multiple institutions, offering pre-negotiated pricing, built-in compliance, and faster procurement cycles.
With a $140+ per square foot backlog in deferred maintenance, institutions can’t afford fragmented MRO procurement. Discover how E&I’s cooperative contracts help members close the 32% funding gap through strategic sourcing.