Constructionline opens doors for social enterprise
As UK Construction Week kicks off, the team here at Connection Crew are reflecting on news that construction procurement specialist Constructionline have partnered with Supply Change in order to offer free memberships to eligible social enterprises.
Supply Change unlocks social procurement for businesses in all sectors, including construction, by helping them to develop their social procurement process, and enabling access to a platform of trusted social suppliers who have been through their due diligence onboarding process.
The new partnership will see Supply Change verify the eligibility of those social enterprises to apply for membership of Constructionline, which is a further prequalification process specifically for the construction sector, that verifies a subcontractor meets industry standards.
Connection Crew is a Supply Change member and we’ve recently achieved Constructionline Gold certification. The certification has opened doors for our labour-based social enterprise, as we seek to leverage our event production skills in the construction sector with modular installs and welfare area builds.
“Now that the Social Value Model has been introduced, it’s great that barriers are being stripped out of procurement processes for social enterprises, and by such a key voice in the industry,” says Head of Ventures, Camilla Marcus-Dew. “Constructionline Gold Certification has been a game-changer for Connection Crew – we’re having to expend far less energy demonstrating that we’re qualified and capable to deliver in the construction sector. We can put much more into showing the value we can add at multiple stages of the construction process.”
“It’s great that barriers are being stripped out of procurement processes for social enterprises, and by such a key voice in the industry”
Our friends at Traco UK, a Portsmouth-based social enterprise who specialise in stripouts, relocations and furniture recycling are similarly delighted to hear that free memberships are now possible for social enterprises.
“For this to become a free quality mark for the overall Social Enterprise sector would mean that so many more small organisations, who may not have considered achieving the standard, could also demonstrate the quality of their abilities, commitment, and operational standards,” says Christine Hilmi. “At Traco UK we hold ourselves to the highest standards, and feel this is reflected in the fact that we achieved Gold accreditation with very little problem. We’ve since been able to support various supplier detail request forms to a high degree of satisfaction, leading to several engagements.”
We look forward to seeing many more social enterprises gaining this gateway qualification and scaling up to do more impactful business in the construction sector.
There’s more information on the Constructionline website > https://www.constructionline.co.uk/insights/blog/new-support-for-social-enterprises/