Project Context
Thrive, the joint venture between AECOM and Aurecon, brought together two global infrastructure and engineering consulting firms that tendered for the Greater Western Water (GWW) utility’s infrastructure planning and delivery program. As a Victorian water corporation, GWW sits within the public sector and is subject to the relevant Victorian procurement frameworks, including Local Jobs First and Social Procurement Framework obligations on major projects. For this particular tender, Social Procurement Framework (SPF) and Local Jobs First (LJF) commitments represented more than 30% of the tender evaluation criteria. Thrive recognised that this made up a considerable volume of the evaluation weighting and promptly sought The Fair Co. to assist with addressing the tender conditions and requirements related to these procurement policies.
The Challenge
While Thrive, as a joint venture, brought deep technical expertise and a strong national reputation, much of the joint venture’s social impact capability and resourcing was being managed outside of Victoria amongst various teams within the two respective organisations. To remain competitive, the team needed to consolidate the individual workstreams into a locally informed, policy‑aligned approach to meeting Victorian Government requirements, including SPF, Local Jobs First, the Building Equality Policy and the Major Project Skills Guarantee.
Our Approach
Recognising The Fair Co.’s position as a social enterprise with specialist knowledge of Victoria’s policy landscape, Thrive engaged us to support their bid. Over two months, The Fair Co. worked across the joint venture’s respective divisions to obtain evidence of social impact, existing strategies and commitments that could be adopted to the Victorian Social Procurement Framework. Given that the two respective parties of the joint venture had staff located in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, plus offshore support, the collating and streamlining of information back to the Thrive team was a crucial role for the Fair Co. to execute.
With the various inputs gathered, The Fair Co. worked closely with the Winning Work team to compile a relevant, achievable and competitive bid specifically for the tender conditions relating to SPF, LJF and BEP. Throughout the development of the bid, the Fair Co. collaborated with various stakeholders from the Thrive joint venture, including Procurement, Human Resources, Sustainability and Engineering. The discussions and collaborative drafting of the bid centred around transparent sharing of knowledge and expertise from these various stakeholders to form a well-considered bid to employment and social spend outcomes.
Outcome
The Fair Co. supported Thrive to submit a succinct, credible and well‑evidenced tender response that met all social procurement and workforce requirements. The strength of the commitments contributed to Thrive being appointed as GWW’s planning partner for the utility’s infrastructure planning and delivery program for the next 5 years. The experience and expertise that The Fair Co. brought to the Thrive bid complemented the existing technical knowledge and skills of the AECOM and Aurecon teams. The winning result indicates that all elements of the tender were competitive and highlights that social value and impact are key elements of bids that can’t be overlooked and are best addressed as a collaborative effort.
