Sustainable Procurement

Sustainable procurement studies how environmental and social criteria are built into the purchasing decision itself — specification, award criteria, supplier assessment — rather than added as an afterthought once a contract is awarded. It works with life-cycle analysis of products and services and with how a criterion is made measurable and verifiable.

FM procures most facility services and products, and is therefore the point where an organisation's sustainability ambitions become concrete or run aground. A circularity or carbon target absent from the tender specification is, in practice, ignored by the market.

• Is the sustainability criterion in the specification a requirement or only a wish, and does it count in the award?
• Is the supplier's sustainability claim independently verified, or does it rest on self-reporting?

• ISO 20400 — sustainable procurement guidance.
• EU Green Public Procurement guidelines where applicable.

• Sustainability criteria that do not weigh in the award function, in practice, as non-binding.

• Procurement and sourcing of facility services and products

• Sustainability criteria in specification and award

• Demand organisation

  The client role must translate sustainability ambition into enforceable award criteria, not a statement of intent.

• ISO 20400:2017 — sustainable procurement.

The standards section arrives in Part 7.

• A sustainability paragraph in the specification carrying no weight in the award decision.

Independent verification of sustainability claims in the facility supply chain remains poorly developed, especially among smaller suppliers without their own reporting capacity.

• ISO 20400:2017, sustainable procurement — guidance.