2026 Agenda

• Examining what boards and executives now expect from procurement in navigating risk, trade-offs and long-term priorities
• Elevating procurement’s role in the boardroom through stronger commercial judgement and risk insight
• How to embed social value at the front end of project planning, and account for how you generated it
• Translating procurement decisions into business impact: cost, risk, continuity and reputation
  

• When supplier ESG data is incomplete or inconsistent, how do you tell the difference between a gap you can manage and one that should stop a decision altogether?
• How much evidence is enough to stand behind a supplier, and how do you set verification thresholds that hold up to scrutiny without grinding procurement to a halt?
• What does relational contracting look like in practice when the goal is a genuine net-benefit outcome, rather than simply shifting risk onto the supplier?
• When a supplier falls short, what determines whether you escalate and work the problem together, or walk away?
  

• Decision-led strategy
• Making trade-offs that hold up
• Designing value chains for long-term strength
• Defensible decisions at the leadership level

• Why collecting climate data from suppliers is more challenging than expected.
• The risks of poor-quality or incomplete supplier climate data.
• Practical strategies to improve supplier engagement, data flow and data quality.
• How technical guidance, quality assurance and digital solutions can bridge capability gaps.

• Sharing what implementation looked like in practice for Transgrid
• Surfacing where the hardest data gaps appeared and how teams responded
• Prioritising suppliers and hotspots without waiting for perfect information
• Using better supplier data to shape procurement decisions, not just reporting outputs

• Workshopping real procurement challenges raised by the room
• Testing how to build sustainability into tenders with tight timelines and heavy renewals
• Learning from peers facing similar constraints, pressures and trade-offs

Rahm Emmanuel, Chief of Staff for President Obama, famously referred to the GFC crisis as an opportunity to do things previously considered impossible. Learn how procurement professionals can apply the same approach to a crisis to achieve more strategic, longer-term and potentially ground-breaking solutions that address ESG, procurement & economic outcomes.

Traditional contracts weren't built for sustainability, and it shows. This presentation challenges the old model of penalties and rigid compliance, and makes the case for a smarter approach: collaborative contracting that drives real ESG outcomes rather than just ticking boxes.

• Cutting through the complexity to cover what actually works: flexible performance frameworks, innovation clauses, and total cost of ownership thinking
• Breaking down organisational silos to turn ESG from a procurement footnote into a genuine competitive advantage
• Building ESG into the way you contract so it stops being a burden and starts being a differentiator

• Where are you seeing real, measurable time savings from AI in procurement, and where has the promised efficiency failed to materialise?
• As AI moves from pilots into everyday process automation, what has to be in place first, and what are the risks when teams scale ungoverned tools ahead of that?
• How far can you trust AI to validate supplier ESG data and flag risk, and where does it still need a human to make the call?
• When your ESG data has been gathered or checked with AI, how do you defend it to a board, auditor or regulator who asks how you know it's right?
  

• Identifying where procurement processes commonly break down across modern slavery compliance
• Engaging suppliers more effectively without overwhelming them with forms and duplication
• Building evidence that is credible, proportionate and more defensible under scrutiny
• Moving beyond box-ticking toward due diligence that is practical, visible and useful  

The Indigenous Business sector has grown rapidly over the last 10 years, leading to a wide range of benefits for communities across Australia. A key part of this success has been the role of procurement and the new partnerships with Indigenous businesses and intermediaries that have evolved over this time. This panel session explores what we’ve learned, the benefits we’ve seen, what good practice looks like, and on-going challenges and opportunities.

• Where are some key process barriers that prevent stronger Indigenous supplier participation?
• How can we improve early engagement instead of waiting until the tender stage?
• How can we streamline requirements without compromising probity or rigour?
• What practical approaches work to tackle verification and black cladding concerns?

• Mapping where climate and other disruptions create supplier and continuity risk
•  Developing frameworks to navigate geopolitical risks
• Prioritising what must be protected when not everything can be protected at once
• Stress-testing sourcing strategies against volatility, outages and operational shocks
• Improving continuity planning without losing sight of cost and delivery realities

• Defining what "community value" actually means in government, sourcing, contracts and supplier decisions
• Exploring how buyers are measuring social outcomes rather than just promising them
• Balancing community benefit with cost, probity, delivery pressure and market reality

• Where has procurement policy genuinely improved ESG outcomes on projects, and where has it just added reporting without changing what gets built or bought?
• Where in the procurement process do ESG outcomes on major projects actually get won or lost?
• Where goals pull against each other in a live procurement, and how should policy and practice resolve that tension rather than pretend it away?
• What does industry need from policymakers to move from compliance to measurable impact?
  

• The Australian landscape and the expectations on Social Procurement practices
• What best practice social value delivery looks like: the good, the challenging and the lessons learned from real projects
• Working backwards from outcomes: who, how and when to engage suppliers and workforce to make commitments deliverable from day one
• Improving accessibility for Aboriginal businesses and social benefit suppliers through work package design, contract terms and a genuinely collaborative approach
• Building capability throughout the supply chain to amplify impact, strengthen compliance and turn reporting into a story that wins your next project

• Can procurement drive decarbonisation and reduce costs?
• Balancing decarbonisation targets with cost pressures, supply continuity, and operational realities
• Leveraging government procurement to create a market for low carbon products
• Managing competing government objectives in procurement
• How to assess cost-effectiveness and value for money for sustainability/decarbonisation options

• Understanding how PPAs can support emissions goals, budget certainty and supply resilience
• Clarifying the role procurement plays alongside sustainability, finance and operations
• Learning where these deals work well, where they do not, and what teams often miss

• Converting policy ambition into requirements, contracts and delivery mechanisms that hold up
• Working with internal and external stakeholders to ensure targets are practical
• Measuring what is being achieved
• Identifying what tends to fall away under cost, timeline or delivery pressure

• Building capability of procurement teams around environmental sustainability
• Scaling change across NSW Government to drive market reform
• Working with suppliers on innovation in design, repair, reuse and end-of-life
• Embedding circularity into sourcing, specifications and commercial conversations
• Demonstrating where circular approaches improve both environmental performance and business value