Member Article

Procure Plus launches permanent solution for temporary labour

North West procurement consortium, Procure Plus, is this month rolling out a pioneering solution to the issue of temporary labour across the construction industry.

Working with its members and suppliers across the region as well as national recruitment agency, Kinetic, the organisation will assist in the hire of local unemployed skilled and unskilled people for work in their area.

The initiative, created in partnership with Kinetic, was developed to support construction firms, which typically handle peaks in activity, using a variety of recruitment agencies that cannot always guarantee local temporary employees.

Supporters of the scheme to date include both national and regional construction firms such as Vinci Construction, FT Finley & Co Ltd, Seddon, Emanuel Whittaker Ltd, and Keepmoat.

Procure Plus will create a longstanding relationship between Kinetic and contractors so local workers can be sourced within a five mile radius of all projects – including those not conducted via the consortium – and will be paid the Living Wage.

The Living Wage is an hourly rate set independently and updated annually, based on the cost of living in the UK. Since its formation ten years ago, the Living Wage campaign has helped lift over 45,000 people out of poverty and Procure Plus is one of fewer than thirty member organisations across the North West.

Lee Bradbury, health, safety and environmental manager at Emanuel Whittaker Ltd, said: “Unpredictable workloads combined with uncertain economic factors can make efficient resource planning challenging so it’s fantastic to be supported in our efforts to secure temporary workers via one agency which understands our needs, as well as those of the communities where we work.”

Fiona Sharp, head of regeneration at Procure Plus, said: “Working in partnership with Kinetic provides a longstanding solution which supports each respective local community in the manner Procure Plus champions while allowing us to gain an improved holistic view of our contractor’s workloads and CSR efforts so we can support them best.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Malia .