Remove Roadblocks to Facility Upgrades with OMNIA Partners

For many institutions, upgrading aging infrastructure and complying with energy-efficiency regulations can seem daunting. Lengthy RFP processes, budget constraints, and procurement complexity can delay critical projects and increase costs.

Through Boland’s partnership with Trane and OMNIA Partners, organizations can accelerate project timelines and achieve cost savings, allowing their teams to focus on growth. Guy Hay, Account Executive at Boland, explains how clients can use OMNIA Partners’ competitively solicited contracts to access Trane’s portfolio of solutions and Boland Service.

What is OMNIA Partners?

Guy Hay: OMNIA Partners is a nationally bid cooperative purchasing organization, and it’s available to local and state governments and nonprofits. What it does is it allows local governments and nonprofits to procure work without having to go out on a free-bid market, which can sometimes take a long time to get through that process. It could take a year to award a contract. OMNIA came about to help speed up that process and to help these nonprofits and government agencies get a valuable product at a good price through a great contractor.

Who benefits from OMNIA?

Guy Hay: OMNIA covers a large group of people. The K-12 and higher education markets are the ones I mainly work with. That would include anything from elementary school, middle school, and high school to school districts and colleges. GSA contracts also fall under that.

Why should a client use OMNIA instead of the traditional process? Is it time-saving? Ease of the process?

Guy Hay: It’s all of that, actually. My first experience with the OMNIA contract was when a university had to make a quick decision about something that had failed. The facilities manager asked me for pricing, and I said, "Look, I can put it through this co-op, which is completely legal. It would allow you to procure the job much more quickly.”

The facilities manager got me the scope of work the next day. I had the price to him in a week and a half for a new air-cooled chiller that failed. They ran it through their procurement office, and it was signed in less than a week. He really was like, “That was ‘heartburn-free.’”

What can clients use OMNIA for? What services and solutions are a part of OMNIA and Trane?

Guy Hay: The facilities manager I was working with didn’t know much about OMNIA when I was working with him. He went to procurement and told them he had an opportunity to do something through this vehicle. They told him that they already use that for other things –for office supplies, furniture. You can use the contract for anything related to building envelopes. You can use it for roofing, windows, blacktop, energy conservation measures, and lighting.

On our side, anything HVAC is covered, so if a client needs cooling towers, air handling units, pumps, split systems, chillers, Trane has pricing established with OMNIA. They also have an energy contract available through Trane. That would allow us to do anything from retro-commissioning and recommissioning to other energy-related work that falls under that.

Why wouldn’t every eligible client use OMNIA? Would there be a time when they decide to go another route?

Guy Hay: Why wouldn’t they? That’s exactly what I ask them. Any large purchase or contract that a K-12, higher education, or government agency wants to make should use the contract vehicle. It allows you to do things more quickly and get Boland to do the work. We have great project managers and stand behind everything we do.

I know facilities teams don’t want to field questions for six to eight months. You want to be able to say, " Let’s move forward now and take care of it all up front.”

What key message do you want the facilities team to know about OMNIA?

Guy Hay: The biggest thing is, you know, look, you have an opportunity as a building engineer or a facilities person to get Boland, who has a phenomenal reputation, at a great price and get it done faster. And it's completely acceptable across the state. This is the best of all worlds in procurement. You can get Boland to do the work, get Trane equipment, get the job done quickly, and your scope is fulfilled. To me, it doesn’t make sense not to use it.

Contact us today to learn how streamlined procurement can transform your facility.