HE Simm Group Improves Risk Mitigation Through Sustainability Strategy

HE Simm Group is one of the UK’s leading providers of building services, delivering mechanical, electrical and public health services to high-profile schemes across a diverse range of sectors nationwide.

They are Partners to the Supply Chain Sustainability School and wanted to understand what their biggest sustainability impacts are and how to mitigate them. There was a need to understand what HE Simm Group already do towards sustainability and where they want to get to, drawing all aspects together in an overall sustainability strategy.

HE Simm Group commissioned Action Sustainability to develop a sustainability strategy and required further support in delivering against their strategy and embedding sustainability into the DNA of the organisation.

The first phase of work was to develop their sustainability strategy, discovering the context, ambition, and direction for sustainability in HE Simm, whilst aligned to their vision and mission.

Action Sustainability undertook a desktop review of documents and benchmarked HE Simm against their competitors and clients, using publicly available information, producing a report on the findings and recommendations for improvement.

Action Sustainability then held a workshop with their senior internal stakeholders, to understand what the drivers for sustainability within the organisation currently are. Action Sustainability then facilitated a workshop where HE Simm’s key clients were invited to discuss their suggestions for developing their sustainability strategy, along with their requirements from the supply chain.

We then facilitated a workshop with a wide range of internal colleagues from HE Simm, to discuss the priorities and ambition for their sustainability strategy. The sustainability strategy and corresponding action plan were developed.

The second phase was to develop the programme, roadmap and content for implementing the strategy. This included developing competence in key staff members and developing action plans and working groups for each of the key sustainability issues of HE Simm’s strategy; people, community, carbon, air quality, wellbeing, and social value. The next phase was to use the Sustainability Tool to capture internal sustainability performance and to gather benchmarking data.

The final stage was delivering the strategy, which is ongoing to at least August 2022. We support HE Simm to deliver against their targets and objectives set out in their action plans, through working group and governance group meetings, training workshops, and additional support. Importantly, HE Simm employees are engaged in the process and are supporting the delivery of their strategy.

The project produced a clear strategy that is tailored to their activities and processes. Targets, objectives and the use of the Sustainability Tool provide them with strategic direction and the ability to see how they are performing against their strategy.

By having a clear sustainability strategy, HE Simm are demonstrating to their clients and supply chain that they are serious about improving their sustainability performance.

The actions taken to deliver the strategy will support to upskill staff competence in the realm of sustainability, will integrate sustainability into their organisational goals and business-as-usual and will save cost through improved efficiencies, such as reducing carbon emissions and waste.