Sustainable Supply Chain

Our customers are at the heart of everything we do, and our partners, suppliers and supply chains support our vision to provide easy and convenient mobility, improving quality of life by connecting people and communities.

The business imperative

We work with more than 4,500 suppliers across our business, spending around £3.2bn each year on goods and services. Collaboration and the sharing of best practice with our key partners helps us understand and respond to the needs of our customers and stakeholders to deliver increased value.

Strategic Partners

We work closely with our strategic partners across all our businesses. Our experience and strong operational track record allow us to maximise the potential of our key relationships, irrespective of scale. For instance, our TOCs work closely with small local user groups and Community Rail Partnerships to provide enhanced services to specific communities, whilst also developing long-term strategic alliances with Network Rail, a national infrastructure supplier.

Our local management teams are adept at mapping and understanding the needs of their local stakeholders, as well as developing partnerships which deliver enhanced services and value to both the business and the communities we serve. We also engage in strategic high-level partnerships through trade bodies to ensure a coordinated response to industry-wide challenges.

Our local management teams are adept at mapping and understanding the needs of their local stakeholders, as well as developing partnerships which deliver enhanced services and value to both the business and the communities we serve. We also engage in strategic high-level partnerships through trade bodies to ensure a coordinated response to industry-wide challenges.

Avanti Sustainable Procurement

GWR and First Group Procurement 

Supplier Code of Conduct

This Supplier Code of Conduct sets out the standards our suppliers are expected to adopt in relation to managing working conditions, business ethics and their environmental impacts. It is FirstGroup’s policy to conduct every aspect of our business with honesty, integrity and openness, respecting human rights and the interests of our employees, customers and third parties as set out in our Code of Ethics. This Supplier Code applies to all suppliers and partners, including suppliers, subcontractors, service providers, professional service providers, consultants, intermediaries and agents, who supply products or services related to contracts or purchase orders with FirstGroup and its subsidiaries.

Supplier Code of Conduct 

Committed to supply chain sustainability

Sustainable procurement is a key part of our procurement processes, We have dedicated teams of procurement specialists across our divisions. Our supply chain strategy, informed by our Procurement Policy and underpinned by our wider processes for tendering and supplier management, ensures that we maximise value in every supplier engagement.

Each of our business divisions strive for excellence by engaging our suppliers, where appropriate and applicable, with various aims and commitments including:

Environmental sustainability

·       Low carbon mobility to reduce emissions, improve operational and energy efficiency, improve air quality and engage strategic suppliers with science based targets. 

·       Climate resilience to minimise the impact of climate change on our business, customer journeys and our supply chain.

·       Environmental management including energy efficiency, renewable energy, water usage, eco-friendly products, animal welfare, biodiversity, sustainable technologies and efficient use of resources.

·       Waste reduction including single-use plastics, and greater reuse and recycling.

Social sustainability

·       Respect and promote human rights, and prevent modern slavery, child labour and human trafficking. 

·       Fair treatment of workers including respecting rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining, fair employment practices, equal opportunities and fair wages, and encouraging the provision of a living wage.

·       Workplace health and safety standards, safe working conditions and supporting initiatives that promote physical and mental wellbeing.

·       Compliance with data protection laws and best practices, safeguarding the privacy of individuals' data.

·       Diversity and inclusion including small, local, women- and minority-owned businesses, and actively reduce barriers to entry in our tender processes. 

·       Create social value by engaging and supporting local communities.

It’s therefore important to us that we work with our suppliers to improve the environmental, social, and broader sustainability impacts of the services they provide us. We favour suppliers who can help us improve in these areas by applying, where appropriate, minimum weightings for ESG criteria when tendering contracts and will exclude suppliers who cannot meet our minimum expectations.

Supplier screening

During contract we screen suppliers to assess the level of associated environmental and social risk, conduct audits and follow up issues identified where necessary. Where possible we work with partners and suppliers to find more innovative ways of providing the highest standard of service with an improved environmental impact. We continue to partner with a range of organisations across our divisions to drive innovation and the adoption of low- and zero-carbon vehicles in our fleets.

Supplier Management

Recognising that collaborative working within the supply chain is one of the most efficient ways of delivering against our commitments and to our customers, we operate a growing number of collaboration programmes focusing on the development of long-term relationships. We have been certified to ISO 44001 for over 10 years and programmes are embedded throughout the business delivering value through improvement projects, innovation and tracking and measuring performance against joint objectives.

In addition, within certain parts of our business we have completed supplier heat maps and benchmarked ourselves against ISO20400 to understand high risk products and countries. Others use BS11000 Collaborative Business Relationships to improve decision-making with our key suppliers. 

Risk Management

Our dedication to safety and performance must be at the heart of every decision we make, and we strive for continuous improvement across all our processes to support this. With reliance on thousands of suppliers to enable the delivery of our services we recognise that we have an unavoidable exposure to supply chain risk and we run a centrally held and maintained supplier risk register which is reviewed periodically and reported to the Executive Committee. Our tendering and supplier onboarding/assurance processes work to mitigate this risk and we operate a dynamic approach based on the category and specific risks associated with the service being procured. Our assurance process considers various environmental, social and governance aspects and will consider country-specific, sector-specific and commodity-specific risks. Suppliers that do not meet our ESG standards will have their contracts terminated. At a minimum, we expect all of our suppliers, and their supply chain, to observe the business principles and ethics consistent with our own Supplier Code of Conduct and Code of Ethics.

We operate a number of solutions to enhance our risk management capability including a partnership with Achilles (Link-Up) and RSSB (RISQS) who operate continuous monitoring and screening services. We measure risk of our suppliers across a range of factors including (but not limited to) Health & Safety, Business Ethics & Legal Requirements, Human Rights & Labour Practices, Environment and IT Security. Working with these partners provides valuable insights to enable continuous improvement of both our own, and our supplier’s, governance and processes.

Discover other ways we are improving our value chain

Avanti West Coast Suppliers

GWR Sustainable Procurement

SWR Sustainable Supply Chain