Explicit provisions to include sustainability as award criteria

What are they?

As well as including provisions indicating that factors other than price can be considered as award or evaluation criteria, some countries might provide specific guidance on how sustainability might be considered.

How do they relate to SPP?

Specific policy and regulation can be created to advance certain sustainability goals. This can include, for example, setting that every contract has to award a percentage of the total evaluation score to environmental factors, or that contracts of a certain value have to award a percentage of the evaluation score to companies based on their gender equality practices. Policy makers should clearly establish and communicate how these should be implemented (e.g. what environmental factors will be considered).

Case Study In 2014, Chile conducted a research study to evaluate how many public contracts were businesses owned by men, versus contracts awarded to businesses owned by women. This study showed that only 36% of public contracts were awarded to women, and that these represented 26% of total value.

Based on this study they established a series of measures to promote gender equality through public procurement. This included provisions for including award criteria to assess suppliers in terms of gender inclusion.

As an example, they propose giving this factor a weighing of 15% in the evaluation, and suggest different ways of evaluation. These include giving full points to companies which are led by women, or companies which demonstrate gender parity in its hiring, showing that the % of women hired with respect to the total number of workers in the same company is higher than 50%.