Sustainability audit manual completed

On request, we prepared a national sustainability audit manual for contracting entities in central government (in Finnish), pdf for the Ministry of Finance. The assignment was part of the Hankinta-Suomi (Procurement Finland) project.

The manual is intended to assist the units in ensuring that their sustainability audits and tendering are cost-effective and of high quality. To use the manual, the contracting entity must have agreed on an auditing right in its procurement contracts by using the national code of conduct annex, for example.

The manual is intended for the auditing of the procurement of both goods and services, and the auditor can add any contract-specific questions to the list of questions. Similarly, the auditor can delete questions unrelated to the procurement being audited.

The purpose of a sustainability audit is to determine the extent to which the sustainability requirements and obligations set out in the procurement contract have been met, to obtain an objective idea of the supplier’s ability to meet the sustainability requirements, and to identify any sustainability-related areas for improvement.

The manual was completed in early 2024 and can be found on the website of the Hankinta-Suomi operational programme. An open webinar regarding the manual was arranged in the winter of 2024, and a related “learning clinic” training course was also arranged by Hankinta-Suomi and HAUS Finnish Institute of Public Management Ltd in January 2025. Hansel will use the manual in the sustainability audit of its joint procurement of office furniture, which was started in 2024.

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