Our Procurement Strategy

We spend two thirds of our revenues in procuring goods and services from our supply chain partners, making them an invaluable resource to our business, our customers and the communities we work in.

As we deliver some of the largest and most complex construction and infrastructure projects, along with projects at the heart of local communities, our Procurement Strategy sets out how our supply chain partners can help deliver our five values of Lean, Expert, Trusted, Safe and Sustainable, making it clear what we expect of those who we work with and what we hold ourselves accountable to.

It has seven principles:

  • Become the customer of choice for the best of the supply chain by being easy to do business with
  • Ensure that we have the right, skilled people for the job, a strong talent pipeline and that we provide an environment where they excel
  • Put in place processes that work, are compliant and transparent, making the best use of technology to deliver for our business and for our supply chain partners
  • Mitigate and manage risk through early and closer integration with our supply chain partners
  • Work together to identify market risks and sharing forecasts that enable early commitment and investment where it is needed
  • Keep safety and wellbeing at the forefront of all that we do – it underpins every relationship, transaction and choice that we make.

Balfour Beatty works with c.6,500 supply chain partners across the UK, processing around 445,000 invoices every year.

As a trusted market leader and signatory of the UK Prompt Payment Code, we are committed to paying our supply chain partners on time to mutually agreed terms. Our latest submission for the six months to 31 December 2022 shows we paid 96% of all invoices within a maximum of 60 days, exceeding the UK Prompt Payment Code requirement of  95%. In respect of the additional requirement recently introduced by the UK Prompt Payment Code to pay businesses with less than 50 employees within 30 days, we paid 77% of invoices received from such businesses within 30 days in the six months to 31 December 2022.

We continue to invest in our processes to standardise our payment approach and enhance our accuracy and transparency through the implementation of enabling technologies and systems such as DocuSign, ConstructionLine, Jaegger and Tradex.

For more information on our processes for paying supply chain partners, please visit our Supply Chain Partner Payment page.

Sustainable Supply Chain

Code of Ethics Supplier Standards