Fair procurement for the public sector - Workshops

Feurwehrfrau in Montur stands next to a fire detection vehicle

© FEMNET | Stefan Klübert

Workshops for administrative staff

More and more municipalities and municipal companies in Germany are setting out to make their textile purchases fairer and more ecological. Take advantage of the FEMNET training and consulting services during implementation and benefit from years of experience and many practical tips.

Whether it's green spaces, electricity, waste, drinking water or the Internet: Public administrations and private companies need large quantities of textiles for their work. You can consciously use this market power to invest taxpayers' money in sustainable production structures and fair working conditions. Administrative staff can already be made aware of these issues in training and further education.

Depending on the target group and format, FEMNET offers different possibilities for the individual design of workshops.

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We accompany you step by step on the way to sustainable procurement. In an initial exchange, we clarify your needs and jointly develop a suitable concept that is tailored to your institution. Our offers are aimed at decision-makers and employees in procurement and administration.

Possible workshop content:

  • Why procure fairly? Human rights risks in textile supply chains and the room for manoeuvre for sustainable purchasing at municipal level
  • Individual inventory: How are textiles procured in your municipality? Are sustainability criteria already being applied there?
  • Good practice examples from municipalities and municipal companies
  • How can sustainability criteria be anchored? Transposition into tender specifications, implementation conditions, award criteria, selection criteria
  • Relevant quality marks for textiles and their importance
  • Tips for product search: Finding sustainable alternatives, dealing with the compass Sustainability

We bring together municipal procurers, equality and sustainability officers to share knowledge and learn from each other. FEMNET shows in a practical way how equality and fair working conditions in global supply chains can be anchored in tenders – from initial steps to concrete implementation aids. The participants gain insights into current developments and get to know successful practical examples. This creates new scope for action for municipalities that want to jointly promote fair and gender-responsive procurement.

Further information on our project work on gender-responsive procurement.

Through workshops at administrative (higher) schools, FEMNET sensitizes future and experienced administrative employees to the impact potential of sustainable procurement.

Although sustainability is now firmly recognised as a principle for public procurement and has also been significantly strengthened under public procurement law, it still hardly occurs as an issue in the training of administrative employees. That is why FEMNET has been implementing workshops at various administrative (higher) schools since 2018: At the University of Applied Sciences Hamburg, the Technical School for Public Administration Cologne, the Mont Cenis Academy Herne, the Administrative Academy Berlin and the University of Osnabrück.

In the long term, the workshops help to integrate their content step by step into procurement teaching and to supplement the seminar and lecture offer with the topic of ‘sustainable procurement’.

Contents of the courses

  • Social criteria in public procurement law
  • Working conditions in global value chains
  • Detection with ecological and social product seals
  • Best-practice approaches to socially responsible public procurement

 

Feedback on training/further education events

‘Fair awarding is proper awarding, is economic award - cost-effectiveness in a comprehensive sense. Deliveries and services may only be awarded by skilled and knowledgeable staff.
Due to the increasing demands on the administration - both in terms of content and quantity - and the central contracting authorities, which are not yet widespread everywhere, employees must be able to deal with the extensive requirements of public procurement law.
The methods and experience of other contracting authorities presented by the speakers are very helpful in this regard.”

Thomas Griewald,
Lecturer for basics of public procurement at the Berlin Academy of Administration