Sustainable Public Procurement: Strategy, Policy and Practice

Dates:

• 10 - 14 March 2025 - London (£2,850)
• 1 - 5 September 2025 - London (£2,850)

Course Outline

With the imminent target of Agenda 2030, governments and organisations around the world are striving to find new and innovative ways of reaching their Sustainable Development Goals. This has led to a surge in interest in Sustainable Public Procurement (SPP) as a means of ensuring that procurement policies and practices generate benefits not only for the organisations involved, but also for the environment, society and the economy.

This comprehensive and step-by-step programme provides practitioners with the tools and techniques to effectively plan and implement sustainable approaches to public procurement.

It first considers the need for SPP, demonstrating how it differs from traditional public procurement and providing examples of the development goals it can support. Delegates will explore how to plan and implement a SPP strategy, considering the context of their own organisation.

This programme also includes a focus on how SPP can be incorporated into the procurement cycle, from market analysis through to contract management. Different tools and resources are explored, including ecolabels, lifecycle costing and use of non-price criteria.

Course Objectives: 

On completion, you will be able to:

• Promote the benefits of SPP and dispel common myths
• Identify social, economic and environmental goals relevant to your procurement portfolio
• Create an SPP policy and strategy
• Plan and apply SPP approaches in your organisation
• Implement SPP throughout the procurement cycle

Key Topics

• The case for SPP and how it differs from traditional public procurement
• How SPP strategies can be used to support economic, social and environmental goals
• Planning and implementation of SPP
• Legal frameworks for SPP and SPP policies
• Defining sustainability requirements and use of ecolabels
• Evaluation under SPP
• Managing contracts with sustainability clauses

This is week one of The Public Procurement Toolkit: Sustainability, Integrity and Value-for-Money.