Public procurement can contribute significantly to achieving sustainable development. The Dutch government has indicated that sustainable procurement is one of its priorities and has developed and installed a Sustainable Public Procurement Programme (SPPP). This essay reviews the current programme and assesses its actual contribution to sustainable development. Specific questions are raised with respect to both the set up and the content of the current decision criteria for supplier selection and contract provisions. This article argues that, so far, the focus on minimum requirements, the strict distinction between environmental and social criteria and the absence of specific long-term ambitions and a systems perspective have limited the actual contribution of the Dutch SPPP to sustainable development. Finally, ongoing discussions by involved stakeholders, with respect to suggested adjustments to the programme, are reviewed and linked to the assessment presented here. It is concluded that these discussions reflect promising trains of thought for the future of the Dutch SPPP.
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This report summarizes the work done by Thematic Working Group 4 (TWG4) on “Procurement and Tendering” for e-bus deployment. It further analyses the various Good Practices collected by project partners with a reference to the above aspects. This report takes the policy learning one step further and sheds light on regional similarities and differences in practices that have been found functional and worth spreading.
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Authorities aim at making the urban freight system more sustainable. The most common instruments to do so are regulation or stimulation of good practices, by offering subsidies or initiating projects together with the private parties that are responsible for actually performing urban freight transport operations. This contribution examines the possibilities for (local) authorities to use their market role, i.e. being a big procurer of goods and services in a city that result in many urban freight transport trips, to stimulate more sustainable urban freight transportation. Procurement is usually not linked to transport and data from procured goods and services do not provide sufficient insights to estimates the impacts of deliveries and trips related to the procured goods and services. This contribution discusses two cases in which (local) authorities try to make the urban freight transport that results from their procurement activities visible, via different methods, such as delivery service plans, and spend analyses. The cases of Rotterdam (in the project BuyZET) and for the logistics hub in The Hague show the first results of how (local) authorities can act to improve urban freight transport once the trips caused by procured goods and services are clearly mapped. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
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The presentation covers recent and current procurement management team research activities at Hanze university, notably SME procurement, sustainable procurement, and innovation procurement.
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Background and aim ʹ Many countries signed the Paris Agreement to mitigate global average temperature rise. In this context, Dutch government decided to realize a reduction of 50% using resources and raw materials in 2030. This paper explores how practice-based research into facility operations can contribute to this aim. Methods / Methodology ʹ Practice-based research which includes direct observations, desk research, and participatory action research. Results ʹ This explorative research presents principles and suggestions for facility managers and procurement managers on how they can embed sustainable materials management in the organisation and how to take control of waste. The proposed suggestions are derived from practice-based research and presented as topics of attention for facility professionals. Originality ʹ Within education of Dutch universities of applied sciences and daily professional facility practices, the phenomenon of materials management is underexposed. To contribute to the national and international climate objectives, (future) facility professionals need better support to reduce waste. Bachelor students were involved throughout this research. This approach gave refreshing insights into waste at the end of the supply chain (control separation units) that can improve informed decisionmaking at the beginning of the supply chain. Practical or social implications ʹ Facility management professionals have an important role to play in the mitigation of global average temperature rise, because of their leading role in procurement, service operations, and materials management. However, they struggle to find sustainable solutions. This paper seeks to inspire professionals with interventions that have proven effectiveness on the reduction of waste. Type of paper ʹ Short research paper.
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from the article: Supply chain integration intensifies through digitalisation of business administration (BA) processes. However, it is unclear whether differences exist between the public and private sector in development or implementation of supply chain integration solutions. The large scope of the supply chain, being a large network of companies working together towards one end product, is limited for this study to e-procurement processes. The related software solutions are included. This study starts with a theoretical snapshot of e-procurement. This is followed by a process viewpoint of the e-procurement function. Next five different forms of e-procurement cooperation are presented seen from an actors network viewpoint. The utilisation of these forms create insight in the differences between the public and private sector in their e-procurement adoption behaviour. The process maturity scan results shows that the process maturity between the two sectors is comparable. However, this only explains the differences per sector concerning their ability to improve and control their processes in general. For reliability, this step is followed by three in-depth interviews combined with analyses of recent e-procurement behaviour studies involving the two sectors. The final step compares the maturity outcome with the in-depth data results. Both sectors show certain forms of coalition in the e-procurement. Where ‘competition’ is a construct that drives the private sector, the public sector has cost control as a driver towards collaboration and integration within e-procurement. This can only partially be explained by the past European financial crises. Differences are found in digital collaboration and the integration itself. The most important difference lies in the European tendering procedure to which the public sector (unlike the private) is restricted. In nature an e-procurement design and development project does not fit the prescribed procedures.
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The Dutch government, in alignment with the Paris climate agreement, has expressed the ambition to reduce CO 2 emissions in the Netherlands by 49% in 2030 compared to 1990. As freight transport is recognized as a serious CO 2 emitter, this sector is confronted with a substantial part of the target. For cities, the reduction of the urban freight transport emissions is, next to the CO 2 reduction, also important to improve the air quality. Dutch municipalities take an active role in coordination, facilitation and acceleration of the emission reduction processes, not only via regulation but also by using their public procurement power. This paper describes the City of Rotterdam's experiences from the EU Horizon 2020 BuyZET project. This project was launched in November 2016 and includes the cities of Rotterdam, Oslo and Copenhagen. The project aims at understanding and optimising the impact of public procurement activities on transport patterns and emissions in cities as well as to find innovative and sustainable delivery solutions for goods and services-related transport in order to reduce emissions.
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Traditionally construction industries in New Zealand and abroad have a low track record for successful sustainable innovations. This has a negative impact on private and government spending, and on quality, society and the environment. This conceptual paper posits that the construction industry needs non-incremental (i.e. architectural, system, radical, modular) sustainable technology innovations to make drastic improvements. Such innovations often come from entrepreneurial (small) firms from other industries or at the beginning of supply chains and must be procured and adopted further into such chains. However, after an extensive literature review it remains unclear how entrepreneurial firms procure non-incremental sustainable technology innovations for the construction industry. The paper focuses on procurement activities of entrepreneurial firms in the New Zealand context. These activities interact with (internal and external) innovation activities for an optimal firm performance. They are affected by clusters of internal and external variables.The paper discusses extant literature, a conceptual framework, main propositions, research aims and the choice for a focus group method. It is part of a doctoral project.Paper, presented at ACERE 2015 in Adelaide Australia.
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Traditionally, the construction industry in New Zealand and in other countries has seen a low productivity and a low track record for successful innovations (Fairweather, 2010). The industry also lags in sustainability (e.g. Nemry, 2008) when seen from a broader or lifecycle perspective. This has a negative impact on private and government spending, on quality and health/wellbeing, and on the environment.This paper posits that the construction industry needs non-incremental (disruptive or discontinuous, i.e. modular, architectural, system or radical) sustainable technology innovations to make drastic improvements in sustainability. Such innovations are often procured (acquired) and (co-) developed by small entrepreneurial firms thus introducing such innovations into the construction and building industry. However it is unclear exactly how entrepreneurial small firms procure non-incremental sustainable technology innovations.
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This paper provides guidance for developing risk-based management tools to improve the procurement (purchasing) performance of SMEs. Extant academic literature only offers little support on developing such tools and does not consider the wide variety of SMEs. The paper defines a procurement tool for SMEs as any structured managerial aid that one or more persons use for analysing, structuring or influencing the management and effective execution of activities within SME procurement processes. In the context of this research such tools are directed at identifying risks or uncertainties in procurement processes and at improving such processes through effective analysis and decision-making. The paper draws from SME and entrepreneurial literature related to strategy, sustainability, innovation or risk management, and from literature related to procurement management and maturity grids.It discusses literature on developing management tools and criteria on assessing the quality of such tools. It discusses key aspects and organisational variables related to the application and adoption of such tools. It then presents a five-step instrument with guidelines and criteria to develop risk-based procurement management tools for entrepreneurs and SMEs. These guidelines are described as to be used in action research with student researchers and company research participants.
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