Welcome to the National Highways Supplier Development System
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At National Highways we are committed to working with highways suppliers to create supplier development approaches that drive better alignment, leadership, and collaboration. Our aim is to deliver better practices and performance across the whole enterprise of National Highways and highways suppliers. Our new Supplier Development System (SDS) is part of a broader suite of tools and collaborative approaches such as the Engagement Council, Roads Academy, and our strategic partnership with the Supply Chain Sustainability School. These provide consistent ways of priming and driving the transformation of the highways sector needed to meet current and future challenges including safety performance, transforming our relationships with customers, achieving net zero carbon, and delivering social value.
The Supplier Development System alignment tool has been developed with our main contractors and other companies from our extended supply chain. It provides a simple and freely accessible way to understand and align with our strategic priorities. It enables you to benchmark your alignment and provides direction and support on how to develop your business to be ready for current and future challenges. This includes signposting to the broad range of learning and development resources freely provided to you from the School.
The alignment review tool provides a clear picture of what’s important to us and sets out a clear pathway to enable you to develop your business. It is based around six strategic themes:
- Health Safety & Wellbeing
- Leadership and Collaboration
- Efficiency and Effectiveness
- Net Zero Carbon and Sustainability
- Supply Chain
- Social Value
Please note that this tool is aimed at helping you understand National Highways’ priorities and helping you to develop and align your business to these. The review output is not used as part of any commercial or procurement processes. When using the tool please ensure you answer on behalf of your company, not yourself as an individual. Please also note that when you are picking the maturity statements, choose the one where your business has completed all the activities in the previous statements. If in doubt always choose the lower level to start with.
Once you have completed the review you will find that our system will have selected 10 learning resources based upon your answers that will act as a starter for you to better understand our priorities. Remember that the School has over 3,000 learning resources and feel free to browse these and use as you see appropriate.
We have also provided you with a very simple template Action Plan that you can use to note the next steps that your business is going to focus on to align your business more closely with National Highways key priorities. This is not something we are going to review at National Highways, but if you are keen to work with us, it should form a useful aid when speaking to us or our contractors to explain what you are doing next month, next quarter and over the next year. Once completed you can upload to the site and repeat this process as many times as you like.