Lucion Services Receives Runner Up Prize for Responsible Procurement At The Northumbrian Water Group GEM Awards!

We are very pleased to announce that Lucion Services has received the runner up prize for the ‘Responsible Procurement’ category at the Northumbrian Water Group (NWG) Going the extra mile’ (GEM) Awards. Account Manager, Charlotte Lovewell, attended the awards on Monday 9th October at The Fed in Gateshead to accept the prize from NWG CEO, Heidi Mottram.

“It was a fantastic evening getting to meet people from different departments within Northumbrian Water Group, as well as other companies in NWG’s extensive supply chain. We’re very proud to have worked with NWG since 2005, and receiving the runner up prize for Responsible Procurement shows that our values are still aligning after almost 20 years!” 

- Charlotte Lovewell, Account Manager, Lucion Services.

The runner up prize also includes a donation to Ingram Valley in Northumberland where two ornamental oak trees have been planted at the entrance to the valley as a celebration of our achievements. 

 

What are the GEM Awards?

As an organisation, NWG is committed to becoming the national leader in the provision of sustainable and waste water services. The GEM awards recognise the contributions NWG’s supply partners play in helping them to achieve this vision and celebrate those that are ‘going the extra mile’. Their 12 award categories ranging from health, safety and wellbeing to creativity and innovation reflect NWG’s vision and values and provide the opportunity to see which suppliers share their drive for excellence.
 

How do we go the extra mile?

Responsible Procurement

Responsible procurement plays a vital role in ensuring NWG achieves its vision of becoming the national leader in the provision of sustainable water and waste services. The objective of responsible procurement within the supply chain is to create, protect and grow long-term environmental, social and economic value and NWG’s Responsible Procurement Strategy has been designed to achieve this. 

The strategy sets out seven key themes; Environmental, Local Spends, Social Value, Supplier Diversity, Skills Investment, Innovation and Modern Slavery. In our submission, we highlighted how we aligned with these initiatives in relation to the work we deliver for NWG. 

Environmental -  We continually reduce our carbon footprint and scope 3 emissions and have worked on a number of initiatives to do, including the reduction of plastic and paper, as well as contributing toward carbon offsetting projects.

Local Spends - Our first contract with NWG back in 2005 supported us right at the beginning of our journey and helped to shape Lucion into the business it is today, allowing us to thrive and share this success with our local community through recruitment, training and development, offices and suppliers. 

Supplier Diversity - We actively monitor and improve on our gender pay gap which is 11.89%, reducing from 19% at our first report in 2019. We work within the community to shape public thinking about our industry and we are pleased with the progress we have made which includes key female appointments within the business.

Skills Investment - We pride ourselves on our Investors in People status and our process of recruiting locally those who are not currently in education, employment or training, through our industry leading trainee scheme.

Innovation - Throughout our working partnership with NWG, we have provided digital innovations to create effective solutions. Using our inhouse system, NexGen, which is completely unique to Lucion, we were able to log the exact location of each site using GPS data. 

Social Value - As a business we are increasing the social value we provide to the communities in which we live and work. Specifically relating to NWG, Senior Account Manager, Chris Wilson and Account Manager, Charlotte Lovewell, both appointed to the contract, collaborated with the Smile Foundation to support two refugee women, providing them with computer equipment to aid their enrollment at Newcastle College where they hope to train and find local employment. 

Lucion Services was also shortlisted in the ‘Carbon Conscious’ category. You can read more about our submissions here.