PROCUREMENT
A SUSTAINABLE APPROACH For facilities managers and providers that are looking to put sustainable procurement into practice, the recently developed BS 8903 provides much needed principles and frameworks for strategy development, implementation and measurement. The process for implementing BS 8903 throughout an organisation can be considered as having three groups of elements: fundamentals, enablers, and procurement processes. • The “fundamentals” group contains three basic constituents – the organisational drivers, the organisational policy and strategy, and the procurement policy and strategy. As the name suggests, the fundamentals provide the reason the organisation wants to drive sustainable procurement and the context to do so.
• Contained in the “enablers” group are the principles of leadership and governance. Sustainable procurement requires discipline and commitment, therefore clear and sustained leadership is vital to delivery, as this will ensure that the vision penetrates right across the organisation.
• The “procurement” group is the final part of the process flow, and deals with the detail of individual contracts, including the identification of suitable suppliers and tenders. This group also provides the framework for constant evaluation and performance management, to ensure that all aspects of sustainable procurement are delivered consistently and to a standard. In terms of the actual steps required to achieve genuinely sustainable procurement, the first is generating a shared understanding of the issues involved and determining the practices that need to change. The second step is to embed the principles of sustainable procurement within the facilities management team, to ensure that actions follow policy – for example aligning management and staff training. The third stage requires the implementation of plans to support the key goals of sustainable procurement. EMCOR UK has found that this is an ongoing process, as customer needs and policy drivers are subject to change. Once the plans have been actioned however, facilities managers can focus on continuous improvement, making sure that both they and their supply chain learn from their experiences, and those of others.
This step ensures that learning is enabled throughout the organisation to deliver continuous added value for customers.
SETTING THE DIRECTION Fundamental to the BS 8903 process is the setting of sustainable procurement goals. For example, minimising the demand for resources is often seen as a key requirement, from both Corporate Responsibility (CR) and economic perspectives, especially as resources such as energy and water are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. Equally essential, throughout much of the public sector, is the enactment of fair pricing and labour practices and policies, so that service delivery and development can be accomplished without exploitation. Aside from utilising and implementing rigorous procurement processes in order to secure and enable “good value”, it is notable that many organisations understand that the definition of this is not always the “lowest price available”. Finally, there is the need to create greater diversity across the supply chain, especially at the local level. This would involve sourcing from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as well as larger companies throughout the supply chain, and ensuring that they address skills development as a key contractual requirement.
SUPPLY CHAIN SUPPORT – A COLLABORATIVE APPROACH Central to the delivery of genuinely sustainable procurement is, of course, supply chain engagement. If suppliers are not on board with the detail of sustainable procurement and what it means, then it is impossible to get to the next stage. It is therefore incumbent upon facilities managers to spell out what they expect from their supply partners and vice versa. To make sustainable procurement practical and not ephemeral, it needs to work to very precise specifications. These can be developed through a process of collaborative working between the facilities manager, the provider and the customer, which creates shared thinking and mutual understanding. BS 11000 in Collaborative Business Relationships envisages and enables such an approach, and can be applied successfully in public sector relationships, as EMCOR UK has demonstrated by achieving BS 11000 accreditations with several public sector organisations in the UK, including recently the Department of Health.
Often these collaborative business relationships with the public sector reveal that working together with partner
organisations to identify challenging but realistic objectives is more likely to result in the identification of solutions than will issuing top-down instruction. Whilst some requirements will be specific to individual suppliers, others may mirror the basic tenets of sustainable development, such as employment, ethics, payment practices, environmental protection, corporate citizenship and health and safety. Outlining clear expectations in this way helps to ensure that improvements can happen and that outcomes can be measured. This is often particularly important in the public sector, where evidence of policy delivery is a key driving force.
Carbon footprint targets are a common feature in many public sector policies. Whilst there may be some ‘low hanging fruit’, delivery of operational targets will get harder as expectations and performance requirements rise over time. Organisations and their facilities management partners therefore need to look in detail at their operations to identify opportunities to reduce their emissions. Improvement measures do not have to be grand in scale. For example, one such review might focus on transportation and logistics, so that better planning might help to get the best efficiency from delivery schedules. This would not only save on emissions, but cut costs, too. Waste is normally another key target area for improvements in efficiency, in particular minimising the amount that is sent to landfill. Working with the supply chain to increase recycling opportunities and establish a better waste reporting system can enable facilities managers to make significant waste savings.
THE FUTURE FOR SUSTAINABLE PROCUREMENT
EMCOR UK believes sustainable procurement has an important and growing role to play as public sector organisations in the UK grapple with the combined pressures of delivering on service delivery, complying with sustainability legislation and working within tightening budgets.
It is also our experience that facilities management professionals within the public sector are ideally placed to champion sustainable procurement and its implementation and can make a positive impact comparatively quickly. Indeed, the public sector can act as a catalyst for sustainable procurement across the economy, because those private companies that rely on it for contracts will have to stimulate their own supply chain to deliver best practice and results.
www.emcoruk.com
PUBLIC SECTOR SUSTAINABILITY • VOLUME 4 ISSUE 2 19
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