Sustainable procurement and modern slavery risks in development and construction : a case study in Australia

Modern Slavery is a global issue as approximately 50 million people were living in modern slavery globally. Construction and property is considered among the top five sectors accountable for modern slavery methods along with 'food and agriculture', 'finance', 'mining' and 'health'. The high fragmentation and complexity of construction projects as well as poor transparency and visibility of the construction supply chain facilitate modern slavery, while the labour shortage due to COVID-19 may exacerbate the problem. It is estimated that 18% of the construction workforce worldwide are modern slavery victims. This number is not negligible as the construction sector itself accounts for 7% of the global workforce. Therefore, minimising modern slavery risks in the construction industry is of great importance. This research aims to examine how sustainable procurement practices can help to minimise such risks across the construction supply chain. A case study with a private listed organisation from the Australian property and building sector was conducted. Data were collected through document review and interviews. The framework for enabling sustainable procurement (Feng et al. 2021) was used to analyse the case. The results suggest that best practices such as 'leadership and collaboration', 'policy and governance' and 'supplier engagement' can significantly contribute to the minimisation of modern slavery risks in the construction supply chain. Also, the findings show that novel data management tools such as 'online supplier questionnaires' and 'web interactive dashboards' can be used by construction organisations to effectively identify and address modern slavery risks.