We are delighted to announce that EKFB won in the category of "Best Initiative to Build A Diverse Supply Base" at the prestigious CIPS (Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply Chain) Excellence in Procurement annual awards yesterday (16 September 2020). The award ceremony was hosted online this year due to COVID restrictions.
The winning entry was announced by Bernd Schonwalder, a member of the board at Unite Mercateo, who said: "I am honoured to be presenting this award... the judges commented that this entry stood out because of it's wider approach to diversity. It has good use of technology, tools and stakeholder engagement."
EKFB's Head of Procurement Paul Paddick said: "I am absolutely delighted that we have won this award, the CIPS Awards are recognised as the most prestigious procurement awards to win. This award is a testimony to the fantastic work that the EDI Team have carried out in the last 3 years, and integrating our Supply Chain into our EDI strategy is essential given the scale of our supply chain spend, and the opportunity to develop SME's directly and through the sub tiers of our Supply Chain. We all know HS2 is once in a lifetime opportunity, and it's essential that we bring our supply chain with us on this journey."
Social Value and EDI manager Elena Gonzalez commented: "For us at EKFB, it's all about building EDI into everything that we do, including our procurement life cycle. Not only to ensure accessibility and fairness throughout the process, but also to build partnerships with our suppliers in order to deliver best EDI practice to our industry. We are so excited and look forward to continue building diverse supply chains and industry-leading practices."
The entry itself focused on the EKFB EDI Supply Chain Plan, our Sustainability Heatmap tool, our use of CompeteFor, our EDI section of prequalification and balanced scorecard, our monitoring and reporting of EDI performance in the supply chain, the number of SMEs in our supply chain plan and our piling JV Bauer Keller's recent "Investors in Diversity" title gain.