The built environment needs to shift from a short-term cost focus to outcome-based, value-driven supply chains.
RLB’s Head of Supply Chain & Procurement, Jake Bush, spoke with Strategic Risk Global about the increasingly complex risk landscape and why it’s crucial for organisations to evolve their approach in order to reduce cost and improve efficiency.
The company’s sixth annual Procurement Trends report, Creating a Value Chain, found that the complexity of procurement and supply chain risk is causing many clients to leave opportunities untapped. Those that are actively managing risks are achieving cost savings of up to 20% or more, and cutting procurement timelines by as much as 40%.
Jake Bush, RLB’s head of supply chain and procurement, said:
“With a volatile global environment, the stakes are high and for many the risk too great, resulting in them passing up potential projects. However, research shows that managing a supply chain enables decision makers to take up opportunities that were previously seen as too risky and save up to 20% costs or more in the process and achieve 95% or higher on-time delivery.”
From reliability to resilience
In recent years, procurement and supply chain operations have shifted from a focus on reliability to navigating ongoing uncertainty, driven by macro-economic volatility, global conflicts, and growing impacts of climate change. These pressures have caused frequent disruptions, increased costs and extended project timelines, while also intensifying the demand for sustainability and ethical sourcing practices.
To effectively manage these risks, businesses must take a proactive, strategic approach that transforms their supply chains into resilient, value-driven ecosystems. By optimising procurement and supply chain processes, companies can achieve greater resilience, improved performance and long-term value. RLB’s research shows that procurement continues to prioritise short-term cost and programme, rather than long-term performance, sustainability and societal impact on built assets. We need more outcome-based procurement which looks at long-term ambitions – how do we procure a best-in-class hospital or a future-fit data centre rather than thinking about the cost and time of designing and building. Once we change this mindset, we can engage delivery partners whose ethos, innovation and performance standards are in line with these ambitions.
Sustainability: from target to delivery
The report found that translating sustainability targets into delivered results remains inconsistent, with one in three projects that set targets missing them. This proportion has remained largely unchanged year on year.
“As highlighted, the built environment contributes up to 40% of global carbon emissions,” Bush said. “This presents a major opportunity to drive climate impact, starting with how we design, build and manage projects. Yet, despite growing awareness, one in three projects still miss their sustainability targets, a trend that remains unchanged year on year.”
The issue often lies in inconsistent target setting, a lack of coherent data, and insufficient involvement of the supply chain from project inception. While it’s encouraging that 22% of contractors are now asked to measure sustainability at project completion, this still leaves a significant gap and measuring this late in the process is too little, too late to drive meaningful change.
To close that gap we need to set clear, measurable targets from the outset, embedding sustainability requirements into procurement criteria and contractual obligations. It requires engagement of the supply chain earlier in defining, tracking and delivering on ESG goals and ensuring robust systems are in place to monitor performance throughout the project’s entire lifecycle, not just during construction. When supply chain management is aligned with environmental goals, it leads to measurable sustainability outcomes – reducing risk, improving cost control and building more resilient, accountable delivery frameworks.
This is an abridged version, read the full version here.
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