10 tips for using social and environmental criteria in procurement

On May 20^th 2020, building on an earlier session in Bistriţa Romania in November 2019, Making Spend Matter partners met online to discuss how to procure sustainably, exploring good practice for each step of a typical public procurement process. This included planning the procurement and examining criteria and approaches that can be taken when designing the tender specifications for sustainable procurement.

The workshop explored all of these areas from pre-procurement, to deciding on the procurement procedure and defining the subject of the contract (subject matter) to how the authority should then design the sustainable criteria for selection/exclusion of bidders, technical specifications, award criteria, and contract management. Here are the top ten tips that emerged from the workshop.

1. Consider the strategic aims and objectives of the procurement before you even start to consider what to purchase. Are you buying a good, or are you using your purchasing power to shape the supplier market to meet your environmental and social policy goals? Are you copying and pasting the criteria from the previous contract, or are you consulting with users of the service to understand the real needs and requirements for the procurement?
2. Create a needs statement that includes sustainability goals, to provide the procurer with a solid basis on which to build the procurement process. The needs statement can be communicated internally and externally to potential suppliers, and helps in determining the most appropriate procurement approach.
3. Talk to all those involved in the procurement process. Involve all key stakeholders who could influence the sustainable procurement – both critical decision-makers and budget holders, and those involved in day-to-day implementation. 
4. Engage with suppliers to find out their response to sustainable aims and objectives. Sustainable procurement will be determined by how the market responds to the criteria, so plan if and how the city will engage with suppliers and what it will ask of them.
5. Use selection and exclusion criteria to ensure the most sustainable bidders. The 2014 Directives allow contracting authorities to both exclude companies from tendering for not meeting certain conditions (exclusion criteria), and select the most suitable companies to bid based on technical ability and previous experience with the subject matter of the contract (selection criteria).
6. Decide how you will use technical specifications in the call for tender: in terms of performance or functional requirements, including environmental characteristics; by reference to standards, typical technical specifications or references, or; by a combination of these approaches.
7. Do not reinvent the wheel when it comes to sustainable criteria. There are many sources of criteria for sustainable procurement, which can be inserted directly into a tender, without the need for lengthy research into environmental performance characteristics and market analysis. These include the EU GPP criteria to various national or regional level criteria such as those available in Sweden and The Netherlands.
8. Think about what the basic (or core) sustainable criteria for your procurement should be and then aim to push the market beyond this.
9. Do not overlook contract management as a means to ensure sustainable procurement. Many of the impacts or gains from sustainable and innovative procurement can often only be realised if they are reflected in the way a contract is performed and managed. This may fall outside of the immediate role of those who have awarded the contract, so robust terms and conditions must address the specific sustainable procurement aspects of a contract.
10. Sustainable procurement is a process that cannot be separated from all other aspects of procurement. The existence of defined procedures for procurement makes it easier to effectively integrate sustainability considerations and by doing this environmental, social and economic considerations can become part of business as usual.

This article was written by John Watt. John is an URBACT Ad-hoc expert specialising in sustainable, circular and innovation procurement.