Feature


The Missing Link: Why Integration Between Procurement, Safety & Compliance Matters


By Josh Ortega, VP Safety, Sustainability & Procurement at Veriforce and James Junkin, Strategic Advisory Board Chair at Veriforce.


There is a growing divide between compliance, procurement, and safety teams — one that can lead to avoidable risks, inefficiencies and costly consequences. All too often, safety incidents and compliance failures arise when decisions are made without fully understanding the risks involved. Why? Because these teams are often pursuing different, sometimes conflicting, objectives. While procurement may prioritise cost savings, safety and compliance teams focus on risk management.


Consequently, suppliers are sometimes chosen based on price alone — only for hidden risks to emerge later. All it takes is one poorly vetted contractor with a weak safety record to trigger unexpected training costs, regulatory penalties, or project delays. Initial cost savings quickly disappear in the face of preventable issues and long-term consequences.


For organisations


Aligning Key Functions to


operate efficiently and manage risk


effectively, procurement, compliance, and safety teams must stop working in isolation. The good news, however, is that there’s a clear path forward in adopting a total cost management approach, which helps businesses to balance critical cost considerations with compliance, quality, safety, and long-term sustainability.


Leading organisations treat these teams as equal partners in decision-making – each forming a side of a triangle essential to the business’s structural integrity. Each are critical to the integrity of the whole. In this model:


Procurement leads supplier selection and relationship


management, applying rigorous pre-qualification criteria that cover financial health, safety performance, and more.


Safety moves beyond box-ticking, engaging in audits, collaborating with suppliers during planning, and conducting thorough incident investigations with root cause analysis.


£ 22 fmuk Compliance ensures alignment with both external regulations and internal policies through ongoing oversight.


When these three functions work together, they form a strong, resilient foundation for sustainable operations.


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