Case Study for Supply Chain Resilience PPE Equipment and Hand Sanitisers

The global pandemic highlighted the fragility of supply chains and the need to improve the resilience of supply chains to provide security of supply. For the Education Authority (EA), securing Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) (items not previously required for the education sector) was essential to ensure schools remained open and the wellbeing of our staff, children, and young people.
Although stability returned in the global market during the pandemic, new challenges emerged, i.e. the impact of Brexit, further waves of Covid-19 and, more recently, the War in Ukraine. These challenges reinforce the need to understand our full supply chains and were possible to build capacity within local supply chains.

The NI Executives draft Programme of Government (PfG) commitments were utmost in the EA’s Commercial Procurement Services (CPS) strategy when establishing these contracts and specifically the following PfG commitments: -

• Our children and young people have the best start in life
• We all enjoy long, healthy active life
• Everyone can reach their potential

If a school closes due to the lack of critical products this has a detrimental impact on children and young people’s ability to reach their full potential. Ultimately the EA’s objective was to establish a consistent supply of PPE and sanitisers to meet Health and Safety or Quality standards. In accordance with Procurement Policy Note PPN 03/21 Supply Chain Resilience, CPS sought, to embed processes and clauses within the new contracts for PPE and hand sanitisers to ensure security of supply of these essential products. The procurement strategy also incorporated ethical supply chains, human rights, and social value to help drive and ensure EA’s procurement activities contribute to Procurement Policy Notes.

During the procurement process for the recently awarded contract for PPE and Hand sanitisers CPS ensured the contracts included provisions to ensure security of supply for schools including:

• Assessment of the supplier supply chain as part of the award criterion.
• Input into the specification from subject matter experts to ensure appropriate quality standards and legislation included within the contract documents.
• Specification development to promote use the use of universal dispensers for paper hygiene products, soaps, and sanitisers to ensure schools don’t get locked into products that can be only sourced from one supplier or supply chain.
• Development of a lotting structure to avoid reliance on single supplier, with two suppliers awarded for each product.
• Encourage participation from local supply chains and SMEs.
• Verification of samples to ensure quality of the products provide, including laboratory testing for hand sanitisers to ensure the efficacy of the products.
• Contractual obligation to ensure suppliers hold four weeks stock and early warning notifications for any disruptions in the supply chain.
• Contractual obligations to ensure suppliers undertake supply chain mapping to ascertain ethical sourcing throughout their supply chain for EA contract to identify any risk of modern slavery, human rights abuses or unethical employment practices and provide plans for mitigating such risks.

EA CPS monitor the contracts monthly with surveys issued relating to the impact of Brexit and more recently the impact of the war in Ukraine, including any supply chain disruption with their suppliers. Monitoring the contracts allows EA CPS to manage price and deal with market volatility. Effective planning of risks in the supply chains have facilitated EA CPS to build contingency plans and measures to mitigate supply chain risks, to ensure availability of the PPE for our corporate buildings and schools.
At the outbreak of the pandemic EA’s business continuity plans included holding at least three months’ supply of PPE and sanitiser products. EA CPS opened a Distribution Centre (DC) in its Ballymena Site to hold and distribute this stock to schools. The DC provided a consistent supply of high demand PPE to Special Education Needs Schools and schools accepting key worker children ensuring these vital schools remained open for the entire lockdown periods.
CPS has established Dun & Bradstreet supplier watch list with EA’s key suppliers including PPE suppliers, which allows for early notification of any changes to suppliers Overall Business Risk.

This engagement with our key suppliers has allowed EA CPS to continue to build supply chain maps for critical and essential products and ensure early identification of any risks in the supply chain. This early identification allows time to plan to mitigate possible risks and ensure our schools remain open.
The contracts aim to ensure that ethical supply chains are in place that contributes to sustainable development, provides job opportunities, adheres to PPN05/21 Human Rights in Public Procurement. The contracts contribute to the EA’s strategic objectives, the PfG and adheres to PPNs 01/21 Social Value and 03/21 Supply Chain Resilience.