Equipoise enhance the University of Exeter’s approach to supplier sustainability assessment 🎓
Client
The University of Exeter is a leading global academic institution with campuses in the Southwest of England.
The University is committed to using the power of our education and research to address the climate emergency and ecological crisis.
This commitment was recently recognised when the University placed 18th in the Times Higher Education World Impact Rankings 2023.
Challenge
The University sought to understand how to assess suppliers accurately and reliably against sustainability criteria in each of their major procurement categories.
The University already included questions in tenders that asked suppliers what steps they were taking to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
They wanted to understand if this was in line with best practices and if they should apply a more tailored methodology for new and existing suppliers in each category.
“Through our partnership with Equipoise, we will be able to refine our sustainable procurement specification process, ensuring our suppliers align more effectively with our sustainability goals. This collaboration has further solidified our commitment to fostering a greener future.”
Approach
Equipoise reviewed the tender questions to understand if they covered the full range of actions recommended by the UN SDGs.
We then added questions to understand if suppliers were supporting the University’s sustainability objectives including ones that go beyond the SDGs like Net Zero by 2030.
We then created a bespoke scoring matrix for the questions and created guidance to be shared with suppliers.
Finally, we completed a Double Materiality assessment to identify the key environmental and social impacts of the University’s Value Chain.
Double Materiality Assessment Output: Procurement Category Heatmap
Results
The University received a comprehensive set of questions with evaluation criteria and guidance for suppliers that can be used to assess suppliers against their sustainability objectives.
The output of the Double Materiality assessment was a Heatmap that showed the Procurement team which sustainability topics to focus on in each procurement sub-category.
The University has a precision tool that helps the procurer ask questions about the most material sustainability topics for the spend category.
The burden for suppliers is reduced because blanket sustainability questions are replaced with questions that directly relate to the impacts of the goods and services that they supply.
Contact Us
Request a complimentary consultation to find out more about how Equipoise can support your Sustainable Procurement objectives by entering your details below: