How to Integrate Sustainability in Specifications?

Sustainability specifications are the written requirements that lay out clear instructions in order for your project to meet its sustainable requirements successfully. Additionally, it helps ensure that your procurement processes are conducted responsibly, ethically, and sustainably.

Once you select your preferred sourcing strategy, you need to create your sustainability criteria. This choice should consider contractual agreements, such as the loss of a significant chunk of business or the inability to handle rising demands.

The most efficient way to ensure that sustainability risks are incorporated into procurement decision-making is to integrate sustainability features within these documents. It is best to align this with important internal stakeholders who can help you with practical and technical considerations.

The main goals and procurement strategies of the sustainable procurement strategy will serve as the basis for the sustainability specifications. The impact priorities will be addressed by the sustainability criteria, which will then translate into precise demands that will be forwarded to the suppliers. 

The specifications should be objective and verifiable. They should be clearly defined without any risk of bias and should allow fair competition among the suppliers who will take part in the bidding. 

Additionally, it must clearly outline the sustainability criteria that suppliers must meet as well as how their performance will be evaluated.

Specifications can be of two different types:

1. Mandatory Specifications

In this type, an offer will not be considered if the specified minimum requirements are not fulfilled. 

For you to identify if there are enough suppliers in the market who can match the sustainable criteria, it is crucial to conduct extensive market research on the supply before making sustainable criteria. 

Unless the requirement is an absolute necessity for the company, the danger of restricting competition and excluding qualified suppliers should be avoided.

2. Preferred or Desirable Specifications

Preferred or desirable specifications are used when there is a lack of assurance over how the market or suppliers will react to the sustainability standards. 

Prior to establishing any preferred criteria, it is crucial to decide how suppliers who provide more sustainable alternatives or match the preferred criteria will be assessed because their proposals will be compared against one another.

In some circumstances, it is beneficial to request that suppliers offer products or services that are more sustainable than those included in the requirements as it will promote innovation. 

This strategy should only be used if the organization is willing to consider other options. This strategy might also work better in situations with multi-stage procurement procedures.

You can decide which type of specifications are useful for your products. We will show you the various types of sustainability requirements that you can use in your specifications:

• Descriptive requirements – Specifies a characteristic of goods or services such as organic or sustainably managed wood.
• Performance requirements – Includes a definition of the way goods or services need to be delivered in order to optimize social and environmental impacts.
• Functional requirements – Defines the proposed function to be fulfilled by the goods or services such as the strength of concrete blocks.

In general, we recommend combining performance and functional criteria since they allow suppliers to suggest the most effective technological solution for the desired performance or function.

Do you want to learn more about sustainable specifications in procurement? Then try our Sustainable Procurement Course! Our course will guide you with all the techniques and tips on how you can foster sustainability in your procurement process. So what are you waiting for, enroll now!