Clients and other stakeholders increasingly expect companies in the built environment to engage with the wider marketplace and to give a wide range of relevant companies the opportunity to freely and fairly compete for supply and sub-contracting opportunities. To gain innovation, competitive advantage and keener pricing, we should look at potential supply chain partners outside our current networks.

There could be small and medium enterprises, “local” businesses, social enterprises and organisations majority owned and controlled by people from diverse or under-represented groups (e.g. ethnic minority groups, women) who could make brilliant suppliers – we just haven’t met them, yet.  Conversely, we could be the beneficiary of other companies undertaking this kind of ‘supplier diversity’ activity, by being given the opportunity to compete for new contracts, ourselves.