BIS SUSTAINABLE PROCUREMENT STRATEGY

Our Commitment

It is widely recognised that the public sector has a key role in furthering sustainable development through its procurement of buildings, goods and services.

BIS is committed to ensuring that sustainability through procurement becomes embedded within the departmental culture. This document describes BIS'S approach to achieving this objective.

Scope

This document describes the sustainable procurement strategy for core-BIS but is equally applicable to all or any of its Agencies and NDPBs who wish to adopt it. (Agencies are required to either prepare their own strategy or adopt their sponsor department's strategy.)

It includes our strategy to:

It also covers:

BIS Environmental Purchasing Policy

Our Environmental Purchasing Policy will underline our commitment to procure all our goods, services and works in a sustainable manner. Our policy will have commitment from the most senior level and our procurement personnel will have the authority to challenge any internal customers who ignore the Policy.

We will provide guidance, support and training to our internal customers to enable procurements to be undertaken in a sustainable manner according to our Policy. Our Policy will be in the form of a stand-alone statement of Policy and will also be enshrined in our guidance documents.

We will communicate our Policy and all ongoing relevant sustainable development requirements to our internal customers via one or more of the following:

We will provide a checklist of environmental and social considerations for each stage of the procurement process which will be available to our internal customers via our BIS procurement web site.

Environmental Risk Assessments

Adoption of a risk based approach is seen as a key tool to sensible decision making in incorporating sustainability within each procurement. We will incorporate a process of environmental and social risk assessment in to our procurement activities. Environmental and social risk assessments undertaken by project owners will identify procurements which constitute high environmental and social risk. Responsibility will lie with project owners to mitigate the risk. Lower environmental and social risk procurements will also be assessed and the correct level of management will be applied on a case by case basis. Our approach to risk management will be to:

Remove risk

Reduce risk

Manage risk

Environmental Supply Chain Management

We already comply with the existing Government-wide standards on sustainable procurement - the “Quick Wins”. The EU Consolidated Directive, which was incorporated into UK legislation at 31 January 2006, allows authorities to identify social and environmental conditions related to the performance of the contract provided they are compatible with Community law and are included in the contract notice.

Environmental award criteria are permitted provided they are linked to the subject matter of the contract. Additionally suppliers may be excluded from tender exercises for professional misconduct relating to environmental and social legislation or for non-compliance with environmental or social requirements in previous contracts.

The real opportunities to manage the supply chain arise therefore once the contract has been let. A process for identifying the BIS suppliers with most impact on the environment and social issues and therefore the most opportunity to influence and manage their supply chains in this regard will be developed. A programme for the management of those BIS suppliers, and their supply chains, identified by this process will be developed and progressed, in liaison with the BIS contract managers for those contracts. BIS approach to environmental supply chain management will be published on our web site.

Further Integration of Government-Wide Initiatives and Guidance

BIS has well tested and accepted methods for the dissemination of procurement initiatives and guidance and for its subsequent integration into departmental guidance and best practice. These include the use of Procurement Bulletins which are distributed to the BIS procurement community, publication of information on the Weekly BIS electronic “Noticeboard”, via procurement conferences and through the BIS procurement account managers and contacts. These will remain the main method for disseminating and integrating future sustainability initiatives and guidance.

Major initiatives will also be disseminated via seminars, workshops and training courses where appropriate.

Mechanisms for Measuring And Reporting On Progress

Progress will be measured via the environmental risk assessment process and the environmental supply chain management programme. Mechanisms for measuring progress and success will be included at the time of developing these two areas. Our procurement account managers and procurement contacts will take a leading role in this, together with group central finance teams.

Action Plan

The action plan to implement the BIS sustainable procurement strategy will take account of the overall BIS procurement strategy and priorities and will be integrated into these.

Management Structure and Resources

The Head of Procurement, Commercial Office, Information and Workplace Services (IWS) has overall responsibility for the BIS Sustainable Procurement Strategy.

BIS Sustainable Procurement Strategy 28/2/08