What we do
We like to think we can help in all sorts of ways, some of which may not even be listed below. Have a look at our main areas of work and if any of these are relevant to you, please get in touch:
Strategy Development – Business Planning & Reporting
You know you need a strategy but don’t know where to start? You will certainly know that there are very many strategy frameworks out there to choose from, all of which seem to say the same thing but in slightly different ways! We take the time to work with clients to ensure that sustainability is built into their business strategy. We help you to identify what your particular drivers are, what issues you are facing, and importantly help you to prioritise your actions, focusing on outcomes that are important for you and your stakeholders.
The figure illustrates the things we would talk to you about in facilitating the process, which will always be owned by you, even if we draft it. We are here to help steer and provide focus.
We can help you produce your annual report, which can be incredibly resource intensive for internal teams. This would include developing a reporting framework and working with internal stakeholders to help get the right information by the right time and present it in an approachable way.
Contract Management
In both the public and private sectors there are occasions where you need to manage contractors providing a whole range of services. Although the scale can vary enormously, in all cases you need the expertise to ensure the contract is well managed and delivers on the essential elements and contractual obligations. Very often clients are less well informed around the sustainability agenda, and so might not know if what is being delivered is exactly what they need, reflects current thinking, is innovative or worthy of investment. We can help to define specifications for those projects or services, plus evaluating their success.
Buying Things Sustainably
Often the most powerful lever an organisation has to improve its sustainability is the money it spends. By influencing your supply chain to be more sustainable you can multiply the benefits many-fold and at the same time identify and manage risks. We can help you to:
- Audit your own supply chain
- Identify opportunities and risks
- Look at how and what you buy and understand priorities
- Enhance your procurement processes to be more sustainable
- Provide briefings for your procurement team.
We have experience of helping with very large procurements such as the Environmental Impact Assessment of High Speed 2 with a value of many millions of pounds and the development of a suite of contract requirements for Network Rail, through to purchasing office equipment.
Responding to Client Requirements
The other side of the coin to contract management and procurement is responding to client requests. Because organisations are recognising the power of improving sustainability performance through the supply chain many are now including sustainability, be that social or environmental requirements, in specifications. We can help you to understand these requirements and respond to them or work with you to develop a strategy and plan which you can use to respond to any inquiries.
We have experience of large scale bid response writing such as rail franchise bids and the development of sustainability strategies through to pulling together answers to specific prequalification or tender questions.
Preparing Business Cases & Finding Funding
More often than not if you wish to deliver a particular project you need to persuade management and/or other stakeholders of your case in order to secure the funding. We can help you:
- Develop business cases
- Identify and assess the sustainability benefits (including carbon, environmental impacts, social value measures)
- Understand and maximise the Return on Investment
- Identify third party funding sources and complete applications.
Ensuring you have the intelligence you need
Sustainability is a journey and you need to take people along with you. To ensure that, you need the organisation to be aware of what is happening and what may happen in the future, and you need your key stakeholders to have comprehensive information to ensure they support your aspirations. The services below can either support some of the elements above, or can be undertaken on a stand-alone basis:
- Research –horizon scanning research on the sustainability issues that are likely to affect your organisation/industrial sector. This will help you understand what actions are needed to meet the challenges or to exploit the opportunities any changes will bring.
- Communication campaigns –supporting your teams in developing communication campaigns to increase awareness of sustainability issues within your organisation. This can be helping to design training modules, delivering senior management/management briefings on sustainability, facilitating debate/discussion on key issues or contributing to internal/external messaging.
