Case Study for Supply Chain Resilience and Human Rights

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war highlighted the vulnerability of global supply chains for a large variety of goods. As a result, the Education Authority’s (EA) Commercial Procurement Service (CPS) has put in place several initiatives and actions to review and improve the supply chains for these critical products purchased by both schools and EA Services. CPS established two supplies frameworks that provide cleaning, hygiene, and PPE goods, which included critical products for EA stakeholders including schools. Failure to ensure continuity of supply of these products could lead to schools being closed.

Ethical Supply Chains contribute to the Northern Ireland Executive’s vision to “have an equal and inclusive society where everyone is valued and treated with respect”.

Completion of Supply chain modelling is essential to: -

• Improve the resilience of supply chains and provide security of supply.
• Identify and mitigate against potential Human Rights and Modern Slavery risks.
• Identify opportunities for reducing carbon emissions and waste production.

EA CPS developed a supply chain mapping questionnaire that was issued to all contractors on the frameworks seeking to understand their organisation’s approach for supply of the products including details on:

• the country of origin of products and raw material
• any risks to interruption of supply
• Contractors’ policies and procedures including:
  • Health and Safety, Quality Management, Environmental Management, Modern Slavery, Diversity & Equality, Corporate social responsibility, Business contingency plan
  • Ethical sourcing policies/risk actions to minimise compliance & reputational supply chain risks (such as child labour)
  • Copies of the organisations Human Rights policy
• Contractor’s approach to Environment and climate change with supporting evidence:
  • Any key products with high risk of potential damage to environment or climate
  • Ethical sourcing policies/risk actions to minimise environment and climate change risks.

The mapping exercise allowed EA and the contractor to triage the products and prioritise products deemed high risk in relation to continuity of supply, human rights breaches or environmental impact.

Strategic investment Board (SIB) advisors assisted CPS and the contractors in providing valuable resources to assist in triaging the products on contracts.

The supply chain mapping questionnaires highlighted the high-risk products that required further investigation with 2nd tiered suppliers and manufacturers as supply chain identified products had been sourced in what is deemed high-risk countries for potential breaches to Human Rights.  This resulted in suppliers providing copies of their 3rd party Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit Report, including a review of the organisation’s Labour Standards, Health & Safety, Environment and Business Ethics. Audit reports included workers’ analysis (breakdown of local, migrant, male and female workers) and details on percentage of interviews with workers and how workers were identified for the audit review. Where there were corrective actions highlighted in the report this was also supported with a corrective action report which was time bound. The reports provided evidence of historical audits to demonstrate supplier/manufacturer commitment to ethical supply of products. This exercise is a continuous process requiring review and monitoring by CPS staff with their strategic contractors to ensure all parties commitment to ethical supply chains.

This case study demonstrates compliance with Procurement Policy Note 05/21 Human Rights in Public Procurement and Procurement Policy Note 03/21 Supply Chain Resilience. This exercise demonstrates a collaborative approach between EA and suppliers in relation to ethical supply chains.