Is Sustainability the Poor Cousin of the Victorian SPF? Why We Built Catchment

Social procurement and sustainable procurement are often discussed interchangeably. In construction and infrastructure, however, they are usually managed as two separate disciplines.

Social procurement advances outcomes for people. Sustainable procurement advances outcomes for the environment. Both are important, both sit within broader ESG commitments, and both influence the value created through procurement.

So the question I keep coming back to is: how can we bring social and sustainable procurement closer together, so that the outcomes they create reinforce each other rather than being managed in isolation?

Is ESG divided or connected?

Social and sustainable procurement are spoken about in the same breath constantly. They appear in the same strategies, at the same industry events and often under the same ESG banner. Yet in the construction and infrastructure businesses I work with, they rarely live in the same place.

Ask a project team about Aboriginal employment hours, priority jobseeker outcomes or social enterprise spend, and they can usually give you a number. Ask the same team about environmental procurement outcomes, and the answer often comes from someone else, sitting in a different system and reported on a different cycle.

I don't think that's because one matters more than the other. It is simply how the frameworks and organisational structures have evolved. But there is an opportunity to do things differently.

The social and environmental outcomes of procurement are often connected. Supporting a local or Aboriginal business can strengthen regional supply chains. Choosing local suppliers can have both social and environmental benefits. The way we select, engage and manage suppliers can create multiple outcomes at once.

A great example of this is at Assembled Threads. They are a local, social enterprise that is manufacturing garments using recycled materials whilst also providing opportunities to asylum seekers and refugees.

The opportunity isn't to combine social and sustainable procurement into one discipline. It's to make it easier for the two to work together.

What does the Victorian framework tell us?

The Victorian Social Procurement Framework sets ten objectives: seven focused on social outcomes and three focused on sustainable procurement.

The social objectives are:

1. Aboriginal participation
2. Disability employment
3. Women's equality and safety
4. Priority jobseekers
5. Safe and fair workplaces
6. Social enterprise and Aboriginal business
7. Sustainable Victorian regions.

The sustainable procurement objectives cover:

1. Environmentally sustainable outputs
2. Environmentally sustainable business practices
3. Implementation of the Climate Change Policy Objectives.

There are good reasons for treating these as different objectives. They have different outcomes, obligations and evidence requirements.

But frameworks also shape behaviour. They influence what gets measured, who owns it and how teams report on it.

In many organisations, social procurement sits with people and culture, procurement and contracts teams, while environmental outcomes sit with sustainability or project environmental teams. When those processes remain disconnected, we can miss opportunities to make one procurement decision deliver multiple outcomes.

What could better collaboration look like?

Collaboration doesn't need to be complicated. It starts with better visibility. Social and environmental procurement evidence should be accessible through a common system of record, rather than being spread across disconnected spreadsheets and platforms.

It also means bringing the conversations together. Where a procurement decision has both social and environmental implications, those outcomes should be considered together rather than reported through completely separate processes.

And importantly, the people responsible for each area should be able to see what the other is doing.

A contracts manager should be able to understand the environmental outcomes associated with a supplier. A sustainability manager should be able to see the social outcomes being created through the supply chain.

That kind of visibility creates better conversations, and better conversations can lead to better procurement decisions.

This is why we built Catchment

This is one of the reasons I'm excited to have launched Catchment, during Social Procurement Week.

SocialPro was started to help construction and infrastructure teams manage social procurement obligations with structured, audit-ready reporting for Industry Participation and Social Procurement policies.

As we worked with more organisations, we saw an opportunity to extend that same approach to environmental and governance reporting.

EnviroTrack and GovAssure bring environmental and governance outcomes into the same broader ecosystem, giving teams a more connected way to manage their obligations and evidence.

The goal isn't to make social, environmental and governance outcomes the same. They are different disciplines with different objectives.

Catchment as the ESG connector

SocialPro already supports more than $38.1 billion in quoted projects and 1,000+ suppliers through structured local content and social procurement reporting. With Catchment, we are extending that same philosophy into environmental and governance reporting.

The future of responsible procurement is about understanding how social and sustainable procurement can work together to create greater value for people, communities, the environment and the projects we deliver.

If this is a challenge you're seeing in your own projects or organisation, send me a message or check out our website to learn more about how we're helping construction and infrastructure teams bring social, environmental and governance reporting closer together.