Sustainability as a procurement criterion for port investments

Abstract

Ports are known to be one of the most polluting sectors, and therefore provide an opportunity to reduce emission significantly. Until now, the attention has been given to reduction of emissions in transport and shipping. The scope of research must expand to include port infrastructures, which should be made more sustainable. In many industries, sustainable purchasing and procurement is already integrated, but the procurement by port authorities for construction works seems to be lagging behind. The objective of this paper is to promote sustainable procurement, through preparing a tool, method or model that can be easily used by all stakeholders. The research has been divided into four phases: Analysis, Synthesis, Simulation and Evaluation. In the first phase, i.e. Analysis, insight is gained in the processes for (sustainable) procurement of different institutions and stakeholders, e.g. governments, port authorities and contractors. In addition, the legal aspects of procurement are examined. In the next phase, i.e., Synthesis, a procurement model is set up. This requires a selection of procurement criteria based on Life Cycle Analysis, and a selection of weight factors to be assigned to the various criteria. The format and type of model too needs to be determined based on requirements such as flexibility, stability and user-friendliness. During the third step, i.e., Simulation the model is tested using reference contracts from current or existing projects. The impact of different criteria can be examined in this manner and, eventually, the model can be adapted. In the last step, Evaluation and recommendations over the application of the model will be given.Hydraulic EngineeringCivil Engineering and Geoscience