Social Procurement Exists on Paper. Whether It Exists on Site Is a Different Question.

There is a conversation that keeps happening between social enterprises in construction, and it almost never happens publicly. It happens in the quiet moments after industry events, in phone calls that start as introductions and end as debriefs, in the relief of realising someone else has had the same experience you thought was unique to you.

Eventually the same question always comes up.

Why are we involved in the tender, but not in the job?

For a long time I assumed the answer was us. We must not be ready yet. Not experienced enough. Not competitive enough. Not efficient enough. We told ourselves that if we just improved, just proved ourselves a little more, the work would come.

But the pattern kept repeating. Different projects, different contractors, different teams, the same outcome. We would be invited to be part of a contractor’s tender submission. We would sit in meetings explaining our social mission, the work we do internally and in the community to increase female participation in the trades, and the outcomes we have already achieved.

Throughout the process we were regularly told how much our work was valued and how strongly the team wanted to engage us on the project. Based on those conversations we would spend hours pricing work, planning delivery and preparing how the crew would be able to meet the project requirements.

Then the project would be awarded.

And we would be told we were not required any further, with nothing to show for the work that had gone into supporting the submission.

When we started talking to other social enterprises, the reaction was not surprise. It was recognition. The same story appeared across civil works, landscaping, maintenance, waste and traffic management. Being part of the proposal was common. Being part of the delivery was not.

Recently I read a peer reviewed paper in Construction Innovation by Fernando, Perera and Gimhani (2026) that examined social procurement in the construction industry. What struck me was not that it criticised the industry. It did not. What it did was describe a structural tension that many of us have been experiencing without having the language for it.

The study explains social procurement as using purchasing decisions to intentionally create employment, training and community outcomes. In simple terms, projects are meant to leave behind more than infrastructure. They should also leave behind opportunity.

Most people in construction would agree with that. The issue is not belief.

The issue is how projects are actually delivered.

Traditional procurement systems were designed to manage risk, program and cost. They were not designed to create social outcomes. So during tendering, social impact matters. During delivery, commercial pressure returns. Schedules tighten, margins narrow and uncertainty increases. At that point decisions default to what procurement frameworks reward, certainty, familiarity and price.

Seen through that lens, what many social enterprises experience stops looking personal. The system is behaving consistently with its incentives.

We are often told we are competitive on price. I believe that. But our model is not identical to a traditional subcontractor. Training requires supervision. Supervision requires time. Mentoring requires patience. Supporting someone who has never had access to the industry is not a quick process. Those are not inefficiencies. They are the mechanism through which social procurement produces outcomes.

The same research emphasises that social procurement is intended to create long term employment and workforce participation (Fernando et al., 2026). Those outcomes only exist if people are given real work. Without that, social procurement becomes something discussed in meetings rather than something that changes lives.

Another shift has happened in recent years. Projects increasingly track “social spend”. Targets are recorded, reports produced, boxes ticked. On paper this looks like success. But spending and impact are not the same thing.

A contract may satisfy a reporting requirement, yet create no lasting opportunity. A project can meet its participation metrics while leaving the surrounding community unchanged. The difference is whether the engagement produces capability, skills and ongoing employment, or whether it ends with the transaction.

Many social enterprises are built specifically to produce those longer term outcomes. Our overheads are higher because our purpose requires them to be. We invest in mentoring and development because the goal is not simply to complete a work package but to develop a tradesperson. When decisions ultimately revert to cheapest price, the industry is not rejecting social procurement intentionally. It is prioritising the metric it has historically been built around.

Across the sector the stories are remarkably similar. Organisations spend substantial unpaid time assisting tender submissions, strengthening participation plans and aligning with project objectives, only to receive no work after award. Some are asked to reduce pricing to match conventional contractors. Some are thanked and told there is no capacity during delivery. Over time this becomes unsustainable.

The research makes a simple but important observation. Social procurement achieves socio economic outcomes when it is embedded in delivery, not just documentation (Fernando et al., 2026). That distinction matters. Participation in a proposal produces reporting. Participation in construction produces opportunity.

The research helped us understand something important.

What many social enterprises experience is not just a series of individual decisions. It is the point where the intention of social procurement meets the reality of how projects are delivered.

This is not an accusation directed at contractors or individuals. Many people working inside major construction organisations genuinely want these initiatives to succeed. The challenge is alignment. Projects are asked to produce social outcomes while operating within procurement structures designed primarily around cost minimisation.

The industry often talks about social procurement as something that happens during the tender.

But the real decision happens later.

It happens after the project is awarded, when packages are allocated and familiar names are considered. It happens when price pressure increases and risk feels real. That is the moment social procurement either becomes part of the job, or remains part of the submission.

Participation is not being invited into the proposal.

It is being trusted with the work.

Because the value of social procurement is not measured by how many plans are written or how many targets are reported. It is measured by whether someone who would never normally have had access to this industry is still here in a year, still learning, and eventually able to teach the next person.

Projects will always build infrastructure.

The question is whether they also build a workforce.

Written By: Ash MacMahon

Reference

Fernando, M. H., Perera, B., & Gimhani, K. (2026). Leveraging social procurement within the construction industry for socio-economic advancement. Construction Innovation: Information, Process Management. https://doi.org/10.1108/CI-05-2025-0207