Lisa Farmer OBE, chief executive of Royal British Veterans Enterprise, urges construction businesses to look more closely at where their supply chain spend goes and how procurement decisions can support jobs, skills and long-term social value
Construction businesses are sitting on an opportunity that’s already paid for.
Every project involves thousands of purchasing decisions, including signage, PPE, printing, logistics, facilities management and maintenance. That spend happens whether or not anyone is thinking about social value. The biggest impact comes when someone does.
The construction sector has made real progress through apprenticeships, work experience and local employment programmes. The next opportunity lies a little further down the supply chain: who wins the contract for the materials and services a project needs.
Turning the new Social Value Model into opportunities for construction businesses
The government’s new Social Value Model is a chance to raise the bar for the whole industry. It puts greater emphasis on jobs, skills and opportunity. For construction businesses, the opportunity now is turning that ambition into something tangible.
This doesn’t need a bigger budget. It simply starts with one extra question: can this supplier meet our commercial needs while also creating jobs and skills for disadvantaged groups, one of the clearest and most measurable forms of social value?
Businesses across the sector are finding the answer is yes more often than they expected. Same quality, same price, same delivery, but with added social value. Money that would otherwise go unnoticed is instead moving toward businesses that give people who’ve struggled to access the labour market a genuine shot at mainstream employment. Asked at the right point, that one question turns social value from something you add on at the end into something built into procurement from day one.
Creating accountability in construction
A job is the foundation everything else sits on: financial security, routine, a sense of purpose. It lets someone rebuild a life and rejoin society. Social procurement is what will enable the construction industry to create more opportunities.
As part of the government’s new Social Value Model, commitments can now be tracked and proven through delivery, and that’s exactly the kind of accountability construction should be working towards.
Good procurement delivers meaningful commercial and social value
Construction businesses are already used to making ambitious social value commitments when bidding for work. The harder questions come after the contract is signed. How are those commitments showing up in everyday commercial decisions? Who is actually in the supply chain? Where is procurement creating employment and developing skills? And can those outcomes be demonstrated, not just promised?
Commercial value and social value were never in competition. Good procurement delivers both, and the businesses leaning into that now are the ones who’ll be ahead once it becomes the industry standard.
