Professional HE Services (PHES)

BUFDG is an association run under the umbrella organisation Professional H E Services Ltd (PHES), of which it is the founding member. PHES is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee and is owned entirely by its member H E institutions.

PHES is a shared service that provides the legal framework for different H E associations to be run efficiently and shares staff and operational resources. There are currently seven sector associations under the PHES 'umbrella' - select the buttons below to find out more about the work of each association:

*BUFDG includes the Higher Education Procurement Association (HEPA)

Each association has complete autonomy to run its finances within the financial sustainability rules set out in the PHES agreement. Each organisation has its own structure and terms of reference and is run by its own Executive Committee.

Benefits of PHES

There are many benefits to H E membership associations being part of PHES, which in turn benefit their member institutions:

• The shared legal framework and terms of reference ensure each member association does not have to go through the expensive process of establishing their own separate, legal entity
• The shared accounting and governance services through the PHES Board are a considerable efficiency saving over each association contracting separately with, or employing, an accounting function
• The shared staff resources offer considerable savings to all associations and to the university members, particularly around the collection of subscription fees, where the subscriptions of all organisations are collected on the same invoice
• The database and Content Management System form the 'engine' that runs behind all seven organisational websites. This provides significant savings as each association does not have to establish and pay for its own website development, and improvements to one can be shared across all seven. Each organisation can also help the others in keeping the institutional and individual data up to date, and members only require one login across all seven websites.

Governance

PHES is managed by an Executive Board supported by a Managing Director:

• Gill Ball 
• Melvyn Keen
• Kim Frost
• Dominic Fryer (Managing Director)

The Directors delegate responsibility for day-to-day management of the associations to the most senior member of staff working on behalf of that association. 

Members can download the articles of association for the company, the terms of reference of the associations and read the PHES Board Meeting minutes. Members should log in here to view the documents. 

Find out more

You can find out more about PHES by visiting the PHES website. You can find out about the PHES staff who support the BUFDG team on the webpage about our staff.

Should you have any questions about PHES, please contact Dominic Fryer.