Excellence in local government sustainable procurement workshop
Background
Councils that were selected for case study were invited to attend a workshop on June 29 2004 in Wellington.
The workshop provided an opportunity to contribute to identifying the drivers, barriers, actions to overcome barriers or enhance drivers, key success elements and measures of success for sustainable procurement. A brief discussion identifying possible actions for accelerating sustainable procurement by local government in New Zealand was also recorded.
Outcomes
Drivers
Key drivers for working on sustainable procurement were identified by participants as:
- To meet the moral obligation of local government to works towards sustainability
- To meet councils commitment to Local Agenda 21
- To meet requirements under the Local Government Act 2002 (s14)
- To work within the "business excellence" framework
- To adhere to ISO 14000 systems
- To realise financial opportunities
- To address specific environmental issues (for example toxicity, greenhouse etc)
- To utilise information provided by suppliers
- To take advantage of opportunities identified through audits (eg waste or fleet audits)
- To meet expectations of staff
- To undertake initiatives identified by staff
- To realise the work of "champions"
- To meet outcomes of strategic plans and policies (including Long-Term Council community Plans - LTCCPs)
- To meet expectations of partnerships
- To achieve innovation
- To provide leadership
- To take advantage of eco-labelling schemes
- To build upon previous sustainable procurement wins
- To meet the expectations of councillors
- To take advantage of joint purchasing initiatives
- To meet the expectations of management
- To take advantage of the expiration of long-term contracts
- To improve reputation
- To achieve professional development
Barriers
Key barriers for working on sustainable procurement were identified as:
- Habit - the difficulty of changing behaviour
- Naivety
- Cost - green products may have a cost premium
- Negative perception of the quality of green products
- Decentralised purchasing and processes
- Warranty issues - the use of "non-specified" products invalidating warranty, reducing the option for replacement with environmentally preferred products. This can be real or perceived.
- Supplier ambivalence
- Conflict of bulk purchase needs
- Difficulty in evaluating success
- Difficulty of calculating purchase cost vs whole of life cost
- Staff perception on the need for non-environmentally preferred option (eg diesel)
- Suppliers cannot supply demanded products
- It's easier to accept the norm
- Risk averse management
- Diverse contracts for similar services
- Complexity of comparing products
- Policies that "lack teeth"
- Lack of independent auditing to prove success
- The difficulty of including factors broader than environment
- The difficulty of creating sectoral market change through the award of limited contracts
- Knowledge loss - the loss of documentation of the previous rationale for policy and decisions
- Lack of external standards
- Product reliability - real or perceived
- Governance structures / systems of council
- Short tem mentality
- Marketing - eg. The use of the word 'green' being seen as negative
Actions
Participants identified the following actions that have either overcome barriers or enhanced drivers to sustainable procurement:
- Include environmental requirements in "Requests For Proposals", shifting the onus to suppliers
- Increase the environmental weighting factors in tenders
- Improve communications on the benefits of sustainable procurement
- Educate - community, staff, councillors
- Develop a database of preferred suppliers
- Ensure that criteria are very specific in order to be able to compare apples with apples
- Clearly specify the weightings to be considered in evaluation processes early
- Build support of management and councillors
- Seek external funding
- Develop clear rationale for weighting criteria that can be justified
- Monitor success through data from previous purchases to drive further purchases
- Create networks - both internal and external
- Just do it
- Overcome myths of 'eco-products'
- Support standardising programs - especially 3rd party verification
- Provide improved training to staff
- Provide tools to assist staff
- Provide incentives
- Start small
- Celebrate and promote successes
- Market - internally and externally
- Include sustainable purchasing in KPIs and performance contracts
- Identify transferable approaches and share information, knowledge and experience
- Develop partnerships
- Develop systems for good data management at project inception
- Identify categories of products and services and take a prioritised approach
- Publicise good suppliers
- Encourage a supplier challenge approach
- Find out what suppliers can offer and what are they doing for others
- Support the development of central resources
- Make it mandatory from central government
- Employ specialists / champions to drive change (eg energy manager)
- Make connections between related work programs (eg Cleaner Production, Waste strategies, Communities for Protection)
Measuring Success
Participants identified the following as indicators of success of either individual projects or the uptake of sustainable procurement as a whole:
- Product performed as well or better than the norm
- Recognition of product/service (eg through awards). This can be recognition of the products or services environmental benefits or recognition of its fit for purpose use.
- Environmental benefits across a portion or the whole life cycle eg. Source/manufacture, transport, use, disposal
- Quantified environmental benefits
- Uptake and acceptance of product or service across council
- More local suppliers/ improved practices/ products available
- Ratepayer acceptance
- Cost savings / paybacks
- In absence of data, and particularly for intangible benefits, the "gut instinct" of success
- When projects "just happen" and sustainable procurement is the norm
Participants identified the following factors as important in measuring success:
- Benchmark and review progress
- Ensure benchmarks are in place before you start
- Audit the project - and assess the need for independent verification
- Incorporate relevant questions in community 'wellbeing’ surveys
- Liaise with the supplier early to request they provide you with the monitoring information you will require. Shift the onus of monitoring.
- Set up systems early to record information required for monitoring
- Set quantifiable and realistic measures
- For new projects, identify ways to assess a baseline for comparison purposes
- Apply for awards (and promote if you win!)
- Ensure you consider the need to compare apple with apples
- Utilise standards where available and support the development of further standards that will assist
- Reference check claims of suppliers
- Choose critical measures
- Choose reporting requirements based on needs (eg monthly, quarterly etc)
- Undertake user satisfaction reviews
