Blog
Blog
Which energy recovery system is right for my laboratory?
Building strong relationships
Building strong relationships with our supply partners is essential to ensure we align on delivering sustainable value to the people and places we impact. We seek to work with suppliers that demonstrate strong social, environmental and economic awareness and ambition to contribute to sustainable development.
Purpose and strategy
Our purpose and strategy, underpinned by our culture, is fundamental to sustaining value over the longer-term. We choose to partner with those that share our values and seek to deliver positive impact and drive sustainable growth.
Operating in over 60 countries, Wood works with over 18,000 suppliers globally. Taking a partnership approach, we seek to collaborate with our contractors and suppliers to create innovative solutions that support sustainable delivery of our operations.
How is this fundemental to our business
Our suppliers are fundamental to our ability to deliver services to our clients safely, on time, within budget and to the quality standards we and our clients expect. As the face of Wood, it is important our suppliers align to our values and the standard of conduct we would expect from anyone representing our business.
The risk of not fully onboarding suppliers to our expectations or assuring performance in line with our standards may result in regulatory action, failure to deliver our operations and subsequent reputational damage.
Sustainable procurement presents the opportunity for Wood to deliver sustainable value to our clients, and to go beyond our sphere of influence, through the standards we set our third-party providers that seek to deliver sustainable development. Assuring our operations adequately assess risk and opportunity, will enable a more sustainable partnership with our suppliers and the clients that rely upon successful delivery of our operations.
Wood is committed to remaining an ethical value chain partner, in the services we deliver to our clients and those we procure through our supply chain partners. Our supply chain code of business conduct ensures we remain committed to high ethical and environmental standards. All suppliers must sign up in compliance to Wood’s Supplier Code of Conduct.
Supporting delivery of our Code of Conduct, Wood’s Supply Chain Standard provides the minimum requirements and common approach for Supply Chain activities across Wood. This is applicable globally to all business units and central functions. Supply Chain activities cover Purchasing, Subcontracting, Material Management and Supplier Management activities. Suppliers are all external organisations which Wood pays for goods or services, in some instances this includes organisations providing goods and services to our clients which Wood manage on behalf of the client.
Our Supplier Evaluation and Management Process details Wood’s standard process for requesting, evaluating and approving new suppliers. It also defines the processes for ongoing supplier management, supplier performance management and supplier offboarding.
Increasing local capacity to support operational demand is vital to ensuring we continue to deliver our services, whilst working with local communities and suppliers to deliver sustainable value in the regions where we live and work.
View our global procurement spend in our ESG Data Sheet.
Building Responsibly
Wood is a founding member of the industry-led, business financed initiative Building Responsibly. Building Responsibly was born from a desire by businesses to connect in a non-competitive environment on the common challenges to protecting and promoting the rights and welfare of workers. Building Responsibly members are committed to promoting the rights and welfare of workers, specifically for those in the engineering and construction industry. Our involvement with the initiative has given Wood the platform to strengthen our approach to assuring the basic human rights and welfare of those that work for, or on behalf of Wood.
Principles: Building Responsibly Worker Welfare Principles
In 2021, Wood announced a series of sustainability targets. In support of Building Responsibly, we aim to ensure 100% of Wood’s labour suppliers sign up and comply with the Building Responsibly Principles by 2025 and ensure 100% of our suppliers have Building Responsibly Principles embedded into their supply chains by 2030.
Carbon Reduction
Aligning our business to a net-zero future by 2050, we recognise the role our suppliers play in helping to reduce Wood’s carbon footprint. Extending beyond Wood’s milestone goal to reduce our scope 1 & 2 emissions by 40% by 2030, our wider focus on scope 3 emissions looks to better engage our suppliers on carbon reduction and influence ambition towards carbon reduction goals aligned with the science on climate change.
Relationships with suppliers and clients are developed at all levels through daily business activities allowing us to gain an understanding of their views and priorities. Executive and business unit leaders hold regular meetings with suppliers to discuss matters including performance issues, innovations and upcoming projects. At an enterprise level, we engage in Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) to manage relationships with strategic suppliers.
Areas of engagement
We review a number of KPIs/performance measures (e.g. Health, Safety, Security & Environment (HSSE) incidents, quality, delivery and spend), as well as utilising due diligence to identify risks and work with our suppliers to close any gaps. We discuss matters including performance issues, training and innovation and upcoming projects to help us align business goals.
Areas of focus on sustainability are aligned to our sustainability goals on human rights and carbon reduction. Included in our Supplier Code of Conduct, we request suppliers comply and promote the Building Responsibly Principles, as well as support and where applicable contribute to Wood’s target contribution towards the UN Sustainability Development Goals and net-zero target.
Taking a risk-based approach, we assess suppliers on key topics such as bribery and corruption, modern slavery and financial health as part of supplier evaluation and ongoing assessment. Ongoing engagement by Wood’s supply chain team with suppliers seeks to embed Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) tools and processes to help us achieve our sustainability goals
Oversight on sustainability
Working together on sustainability issues, the group functions supporting supply chain and sustainability connect monthly to ensure alignment on key sustainability aims.
Our global head of supply chain is part of Wood's Human Rights and Modern Slavery Oversight Committee, and is committed to ensuring the dissemination of training and guidance material in support of the principles and compliance with the principles. In addition, supply chain is represented at group level in several internal strategic working groups, including our climate change working group and inclusion and diversity working group.
Supplier support hub
We are currently developing our supplier support hub intended to deliver key training and support material to help our supply partners meet Wood’s expectations.
