The purchasing and contracts department received the Achievement of Excellence in Procurement Award for 2012 from the National Purchasing Institute (NPI). It is the fifth consecutive year the department has received the prestigious award. This year the department was one of only five government agencies in Nevada and one of only 17 higher education agencies in the nation to receive the honor. The score received by UNLV for its 2012 entry placed it in the top 15 percent of all 2012 awardees nationally. NPI presents the award annually to those organizations that demonstrate excellence based on scoring against standard criteria. The program is designed to measure the innovation, professionalism, productivity, E-procurement, and leadership attributes of a procurement organization. The criteria an organization must meet in order to receive the award is comprehensive, rigorous, and requires a very detailed submittal replete with metrics and narratives of the accomplishments obtained by that organization.