» London Universities Purchasing Consortium Advances Procurement Process with Full ISO20400 Evaluation
Explore how Action Sustainability’s full ISO20400 evaluation helped London Universities Purchasing Consortium (LUPC) understand and improve their sustainable procurement performance over the last 5 years.
LUPC have formally adopted ISO 20400:2017 as the methodology for implementing sustainable procurement within their organisation and with their member organisations.
They assessed their procurement process against ISO 20400 in 2017 and 2018 and having taken on board the report outcomes and recommendations from these first 2 evaluations, they were seeking support in understanding the sustainable procurement performance across the business after a 5-year period of action planning and implementation.
Action Sustainability undertook a desktop review of documents and conducted interviews with relevant staff across the various departments within LUPC. We produced a report based on the findings and put forth recommendations for areas of improvement.
The first phase of the evaluation involved reviewing LUPC’s documentation such as policies, risk assessments, category management plans, job descriptions, tender procedures (PQQ & ITT documents) and example tender exercises recently undertaken.
The second part of our process involved a series of 1:1 interviews around sustainability, sustainable procurement with key people from LUPC’s business, at different levels and in different roles, all with an influence on spend. The interviews were based on the key elements of the ISO 20400 standard – Fundamentals, Policy & Strategy, Enablers and Process. Through our discussions, we were able to explore what sustainability improvements from the last 2 evaluations were implemented through procurement.
“Responsible Procurement is not a bolt-on, it is well integrated within LUPC and all we do, it is our USP. The re-evaluation affirmed our thinking that we have continued to grow and push the boundaries in supply chain sustainability due diligence. We are very much aligned with the continuous improvement principle of ISO 20400 and are looking forward to planning the next phase of our journey to develop our supply chain.”
The analysis provided a confidence that LUPC has maintained a consistency in it’s processes and approach to sustainable procurement since the last assessment in 2018, and there are plenty examples of good practice. LUPC’s approach to sustainable procurement was assessed as being ‘leading’, a score rarely seen to be achieved and maintained across sectors and industries.
The external environmental factors (COVID-19, Brexit implications and the Russia-Ukraine crisis) that have challenged procurement professionals and created supply chain upheaval in the last five years, have not disturbed LUPC’s drive for ensuring excellence in sustainability due diligence within the frameworks and the systematic embedding of responsible procurement principles. The evaluation results gave LUPC an action plan of activities to do, the timescales and complexity in carrying them out to reach their sustainability goals.
The recommendations will bring about further upskilling of staff competence in the realm of sustainability, alignment of the strategy with identified risks and opportunities, better supply chain relationships through supplier development. The ISO 20400 Standard is an ideal platform to use to assess and then improve your procurement, supply chain management and sustainability outcomes.
Action Sustainability are recognised leaders in sustainability delivery and sustainable procurement.
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