Dorée, A; Wal, G v d and Boes, H (2011) Client leadership in sustainability: How the Dutch railway agency created CO2 awareness in the industry. In: Egbu, C and Lou, E C W (eds.) Proceedings of 27th Annual ARCOM Conference, 5-7 September 2011, Bristol, UK.
Abstract
Sustainability is high on the policy agenda of the public sector in many countries. Since the Copenhagen Conference, the Netherlands has been implementing policies to support the 20/2020 carbon dioxide reduction agenda. Sustainable procurement is now obligatory for all public clients. The standard approach is to develop criteria and measures to assess the sustainability of products or offers. These are then weighted in a most economically advantageous tender selection procedure. In the Netherlands, a wide array of criteria guides are being developed for several product groups and practitioners criticise the bureaucracy involved. Meanwhile, ProRail (the Dutch railway agency) has followed a different approach. They have developed a CO2 performance ladder comprising six steps. Contractors can have their CO2 emission awareness and reduction policies assessed and certified. The more conscious and consistently the contractor works on CO2 reduction, the higher the contractor climbs the CO2 ladder. This will provide the contractor with clear benefits in the tendering procedure: a fictitious mark-down of up to ten per cent in the bid price (an award advantage). Although only in use since December 2009 the effects of this CO2 ladder are remarkable. This paper documents the rapid adoption of this scheme, explores the strategy and the mechanics at work, and discusses the value and impact of the scheme in a context of client leadership.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | client leadership; procurement; sustainability |
| Index terms: | CO2 emissions, public sector, strategy, carbon dioxide, conference, Netherlands, documents, practitioner, agency, public client |
| Subjects: | research dissemination and communication, practitioner, climate science, sociology, administrative law, management, professional development, Geography |
| Topics: | Legal Issues, Stakeholder Management, Roles and Professions, Sustainability, Business Strategy, Geographical Context, Research Practice, Information Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here