Working With Our Supply Chain
Our suppliers are crucial to the effective operation of our business. We purchase a wide range of goods and services and rely heavily on a number of key suppliers for the effective delivery of our services such as vehicle manufacturers, engine component and fuel suppliers, and waste management, cleaning and catering contractors.
Ethical Purchasing
Our purchasing strategy is driven by the need to obtain competitive goods and services in compliance with our Ethical Purchasing Policy.
Powerful software allows us to manage the significant amounts of information which is generated during the tendering process, including ethical and environmental data from our supplier self-assessment questionnaire. Responses are scored and evaluated to determine the appropriate level of follow-up work required.
We have also undertaken an ethical and environmental risk assessment of our largest contracts and created a risk matrix to help purchasing managers identify risks when setting up new contracts. The UK purchasing team has undertaken a workshop on sustainable purchasing and a similar event will be run by the newly formed procurement organisation in North America in the coming year.
We seek a partnership approach with our key suppliers, maintaining regular two-way dialogue and driving continuous improvement.
Sustainable Procurement in Practice
We have integrated sustainability issues into our contracts. Some examples are listed below:
- We continue to work in partnerships with our vehicle and engine suppliers on new vehicle development and technology trialling. Fuel efficiency is a particular focus at present. For example we have collaborated with Volvo to identify fuel efficiency improvements for new buses and we continue to challenge our suppliers to produce increasingly fuel-efficient vehicles.
- Our design teams are developing design guides and checklists aimed at improving the sustainability of our buildings. For example our new offices in Aberdeen will include ground source heat pumps and other sustainability features.
- With our waste management contractors we are reducing waste by optimising collections and disposal methods and improving recycling rates at our depots and stations.
- In partnership with our catering suppliers we have developed a sustainable purchasing policy for First Great Western focusing on locally sourced products. This reduces the catering service's carbon footprint and supports local suppliers.
- As part of our Ethical Purchasing Policy we promote Fairtrade and sustainable development products in the catering facilities on our trains. We already offer Fairtrade tea, coffee and snacks on selected services and will continue to extend the range.
- In partnership with our stationery supplier, we introduced 100% recycled copier paper. With a few exceptions this is now used for all our office printing and copying.
- Working with our IT hardware suppliers we are reducing energy consumption and the environmental impacts of the supply chain by rationalising our printing hardware. As part of this process we will cut the number of print devices in the UK from 1,800 to 1,060. The new machines will be 27% more energy-efficient than the existing ones.