Sustainable Procurement - A New Era

In the next 40 years, the world's population is likely to double. In theory this should be good news for buyers and sellers because all those extra people will need homes, schools, workplaces and infrastructure. They will need stuff to buy, banks to keep their money in and trivial things to waste it on. But we are living in a world of finite resources and within 40 years, many of the natural resources we take for granted such as oil, water, some base metals and minerals, will be in very short supply. In addition, climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions will fundamentally change the way we live and do business.

Moreover, the ethics of doing business on a global scale is under increasing scrutiny, particularly the exploitation of workforces. So the long term winners will be those businesses who take responsibility for their impacts on society and the environment and address those impacts in a positive manner throughout their value chains from the biggest customer to the smallest supplier. Both businesses and public bodies need to explore why they want to be sustainable in order to have an effective strategy. This could be to reduce cost, differentiate their offer to the market, attract better people or better clients, or simply because it is the right thing to do. Every organisation will have their own profile of business reasons to do this and a clear understanding of this is a fundamental touchstone when considering sustainability ambitions and risks.

But where is the opportunity to really discuss these issues? Having participated in various tedious conferences with the audiences suffering a slow death by Powerpoint, I have decided to instigate my own conference. I have invited some respected colleagues from organisations and businesses I admire and will ask them to debate some of the key sustainable procurement issues of the day, with as much participation as possible with the audience. I am really looking forward to having directors of Skanska, Willmott Dixon, Morgan Sindall and United Utilities discussing questions like "do clients drive the industry or is there an opportunity for enlightened industry players to create a market for more sustainable construction?" I plan to have senior public sector buyers and sellers on the same panel and ask them "does the public sector really believe that sustainability and value are synonymous? Or is it just a lot of political hot air?" Just for fun I will have an EU procurement expert on hand to explain what we can really do and comply with the rules. The session I am really looking forward to is the one about innovation. I want to ask senior directors from companies like Marks and Spencer, FMC Technologies, Arup and others what role innovation plays in value chains and how this will affect how we procure in the future.

Do come along to our fantastic sponsor venue at Sainsbury's HQ in Holborn, London and to find out more or to book a place, please visit our conference website.

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