Training & Events
Social procurement training & events
BCSPI offers core social procurement training sessions and subject-specific webinars designed to help governments and institutional purchasers implement social procurement practices across their purchasing. Members get free unlimited access to core training and all other webinars and events. Non-members can access webinars and other events at cost.
SP101 - Introduction to Social Procurement
BCSPI Social Procurement Training - SP101
This session provides a complete introduction to social procurement concepts. Understand the what, why and how of social procurement and how it can play a role in COVID-19 recovery. Explore social procurement principles, best practices and examples, and learn to identify opportunities and next steps.
SP201 - Social Procurement Implementation
BCSPI Social Procurement Training - SP201
This session digs deeper into implementation and connects social procurement outcome measurement with achieving local social and community development objectives. During this session attendees will work through a variety of procurement scenarios in groups from setting objectives, to including them in bid language to measuring outcomes.
SP301 - Social Procurement In Construction Projects
BCSPI Social Procurement Training - SP301
This session focuses on the implementation of social procurement in construction and infrastructure projects under $250K. Topics covered include project planning and monitoring, identifying objectives and outcomes and options for unbundling of larger contracts.
Social procurement training webinars
BCSPI hosts social procurement training in a variety of subject-specific webinars featuring procurement and industry experts. These sessions help provide purchasing professionals with knowledge and learning to support implementation.
Webinar - Purchasing Cards: Small Buys and Big Impact
Join BCSPI for a webinar about maximizing social impact through corporate purchasing card spend and developing a purchasing card policy with social procurement. Led by Leah Hamilton (Government of BC), this session will show how these small purchases can add up to big impact in your community and will cover the how and why as well as how to evaluate social value in purchasing card spend.
Webinar - Community Employment Benefits: A national perspective and local example
Join BCSPI to explore the federal Community Employment Benefits (CEB) Initiative, and explore how you can incorporate community benefits into your next infrastructure or development project. We’ll learn from Scott Hainsworth as he shares Comox Valley Regional District’s experience integrating community employment benefits into the two-stage procurement process for their $126 million water treatment project. Other speakers to be announced shortly.
Social procurement events
BCSPI’s events showcase the power and possibility of social procurement. The Purchasing Power series in 2021 and 2022 will convene special guests who are experts in their fields to discuss how social procurement can help address the most pressing issues facing our communities.
BCSPI presents: Purchasing Power
Are you interested in learning more about social procurement and how it can benefit the wellbeing of local communities?Join us for six lively conversations about what social procurement can do to improve the health and wellbeing of local communities in B.C.
This six part speaker series, hosted by the British Columbia Social Procurement Initiative (BCSPI), features leaders who are putting the principles of a social value marketplace into action, and explores how local governments and institutions can use purchasing power to address the issues that matter to your community.
With speakers:
Judy Kitts, First Nations Engagement Manager
Greater Victoria Harbour Authority
Ron Arcos, Business Development Officer
Nuu-chah-nulth Economic Development Corporation
With speakers:
Amy Robinson, Founder & Executive Director
LOCO BC
Alisha Masongsong, Community Economic Development Planner
City of Vancouver
With speakers:
Heather O’Hara
Executive Director
BC Farmers Markets
Jennifer Reynolds,
Co-Executive Director
Nourish
With speakers:
Nerissa Allen, Co-Founder and President
Black Business Association of BC (BBABC)
Dugan Selkirk
Business Advisor for the Entrepreneurs with Disabilities Program
Community Futures BC
With speakers:
Mayor Karen Elliott
District of Squamish
Yamila Franco, Co-Founder
Nyoka