Sustainability has been on everyone’s agenda for the last few years, and for rail businesses, it’s now a business imperative.
For many years, a lot of businesses have struggled to understand how to implement sustainable practices in the way that the industry needs it to, but as more buying organisations and Tier One Contractors lay out what they are looking for from its SME supply chain, now is the time where those who don’t act will be left behind.
Whether you are an SME or not, it is one thing putting these practices in place, but key to the success in any tender is sufficiently communicating those initiatives and the ACTUAL impact it has made. As both environmentally and socially responsible practices continue to make up more of the final score in a technical question, superficial responses can significantly impact your chance of winning.
In this piece, we provide some basic tick boxes to help SMEs to consider what SHOULD go into a sustainability response to resonate with potential clients and demonstrate your genuine commitment to a greener future.
Understanding the Importance of Sustainability in Bids & Tenders
While we’re providing you with some tick boxes here, sustainability questions in bids and tenders aren’t just a box-ticking exercise. They’re a window into your organisation’s values, long-term vision, and commitment to responsible business practices.
In the rail industry now, procurement is gained by a sharing of values and a demonstration of proactivity from a social and environmental sustainability point of view.
Key Tips for Writing Winning Sustainability Answers:
- Go Beyond the Buzzwords: Avoid generic statements like “we are committed to sustainability.” Instead, provide concrete examples of your initiatives, policies, and achievements. Quantify your impact whenever possible – use metrics and data to demonstrate the effectiveness of your efforts. Everything has to be backed up by evidence.
Generally, for rail businesses, the fleet provides the greatest environmental impact. Implementing digital initiatives and telematics, coupled with effective resourcing protocols, will help you to provide the evidence you need to support these bids.
- Tailor Your Responses: Don’t just recycle generic sustainability answers. Carefully review the specific questions asked and tailor your responses to address the client’s unique needs and priorities. Research the client’s own sustainability initiatives and align your answers accordingly – even a diagram with direct alignment is acknowledgement that you are on the right track.
- Focus on Materiality: Identify the sustainability issues that are most relevant to rail and the specific services listed in the tender. Prioritise your responses based on these material issues, demonstrating a clear understanding of the most significant environmental and social impacts.
- Showcase Your Achievements: Evidence, Evidence, Evidence. Highlight your past successes in sustainability. Provide specific case studies where you have implemented sustainable practices and achieved positive outcomes. Include testimonials and enter any awards where possible to strengthen your evidence. Again, the awards need evidence for you to win it!
- Outline Your Future Plans: Don’t just focus on what you’ve done – articulate your future plans for continuous improvement in sustainability. You should have an Environmental Strategy and someone (or a team) who owns and drives that strategy within your business. Outline your goals, targets, and strategies for achieving your strategy. Demonstrate your commitment to ongoing progress and innovation.
- Address the Entire Supply Chain: Sustainability isn’t just about your own operations – it’s about the entire supply chain. Demonstrate your commitment to responsible sourcing, ethical labour practices (if you subcontract), and environmental stewardship throughout your supply chain.
- Be Authentic and Transparent: Avoid greenwashing. Be honest and transparent about your challenges and areas for improvement. Acknowledge any shortcomings and outline your plans for addressing them. Authenticity builds trust and credibility.
- Remember the social element too: It’s always easy to get drawn in to focusing on the environmental benefits only. Look at social sustainability too. In every Network Rail region in the UK, there are plenty of social opportunities – such as conscious resourcing and recruiting. Everything also has to be backed up by evidence.
Examples of Strong Sustainability Answers:
- Instead of: “We are committed to reducing our carbon footprint.”
- Try: “We have reduced our carbon emissions by XX% over the past three years by implementing energy-efficient technologies in our facilities and in frontline operations. We are committed to achieving a further XX% reduction over the next two years by investing in renewable energy sources and optimising our logistics operations.”
- Instead of: “We have a sustainable supply chain.”
- Try: “We have implemented a rigorous supply chain procurement process that includes environmental and social criteria. We conduct regular audits of our suppliers to ensure compliance and work collaboratively with them to improve their sustainability performance. XX% of materials are sourced from local suppliers whenever possible to reduce transportation emissions and our digital processes allow us to identify where we stock materials from to prove beyond doubt that we are contributing to the local economy.”
Winning bids and tenders in today’s competitive landscape requires a strong commitment to sustainability. Implementation within the business is one part of it, but effective communication is also incredibly important. Many SMEs fall at this stage because, while they are busy operating the business and doing the right things, they aren’t recording it and documenting it with new work in mind.
While CP7 spending is currently low, now is a prime opportunity to get your tender library in order. If you would like a discussion on your bid, talk to us by emailing Dan on dan.clark@railindustryconnect.co.uk
