Social procurement a (Water)Sure thing

The fourth GROW Gippsland Procurement Working Group met on September 9th at the Victorian Desalination Plant in Wonthaggi facilitated by Watersure, to discuss their journey in social and local procurement.

The group, consisting of attendees from mining, water, education, government, health, transport and tourism, talked through their organisations maturity in regards to social and local procurement and the outcomes achieved to date.

The groups also talked through what support they need going forward from the GROW Gippsland team in order to achieve the outcomes they committed to in their Action Plans.

After hearing a presentation from Chris Roe from VendorPanel Marketplace, the Regional Procurement Platform supporting local procurement, Wayne Crowley, Procurement Business Partner TAFE Gippsland, discusses his experience of using the platform. Pointing out that staff find the platform easy to use and that 100% of the suppliers being engaged are local.

The attendees were then treated to a tour around the plant, created using 65% local content, walking through sections where sea water is pulled in from the ocean and pushed through specialised pipes and filters to squeeze out fresh water, 125 gigalitres a year to be exact, one third of Melbourne’s total annual usage.

The ongoing creation of a regional procurement toolkit for Gippsland businesses, which can be found here https://bit.ly/2K9fqSh, is being added to with the consultation of this working group, with new documents available soon.