Ensuring a Sustainable Supply Chain

Build a solid foundation for your future technological improvements

How does global warming affect the real estate industry?

The real estate or build environment represents just under 40% of global emissions causing global warming and climate change. This is impacting all aspects from the location, materials, values, operational management, decommissioning and circular economy aspects across all sectors including residential, office, industrial and logistics.

What are the ways of improving sourcing sustainability and flexibility by using new technologies?

There are four key technology areas required for sustainability in the supply chain, firstly the ability to assess suppliers, here CBRE uses EcoVadis and has spent targets with sustainable suppliers and sourcing activity. Second is the ability to get primary or actual emission data from suppliers, here CBRE has partnered with Emitwise. Third, supplier engagements to monitor and manage improvements and here we are looking to run a proof of concept with Vizibl. And finally, a P2P platform that provides sustainability details to buyers at the point of purchase, here we use Coupa.

What aspects of procurement should be noticed in order to stay ahead of the competition in the near future?

Procurement teams that don’t have good spend data, understand and monitor inherent risks in their supply chain and have not started them on the sustainability or social / diversity journey will need to quickly close these gaps. You cannot layer the more advanced technologies, data and engagements without having a solid foundation.

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Mat Langley is the Global Head of Procurement for Sustainability, where the focus is on decarbonising the supply chain and circular economy, supplier diversity and responsible procurement at CBRE, the largest Real Estate company globally. Prior to this, Mat was the Global Head of Procurement Operations, Technology and Transformation, where he initially started building the ESG program. Mat gained an MSc in Sustainable Development over 15 years ago and while has focused on a procurement career, has been supporting various sustainability and social programs while in oil and gas, IT outsourcing, financial services and now real estate industries.