5-063 Strategic alignment Review Tool (StART) Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) assessments

Highways England requires further technical consultancy to conclude the programme of Strategic Alignment Assessment Review Toolkit (StART3). This work package is to undertake an EDI only round of assessments. This is to ensure that Highways England has complied with the Governments Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) of increasing EDI by 15% by March 2020. The completion of the current StART process along with further StART assessments will ensure Highways England has a supply chain aligned to the organisation, particularly considering the change to Highways England and the challenge of successfully delivering the RIS. StART will also contribute to:  improved supplier alignment with Highways England's Supply Chain Strategy  enable benchmark of performance  a source of intelligence around key strategic areas such as capacity and capability, sustainability and efficiency and innovation and inclusion which inputs into our supplier relationship programme and other HE initiatives.  Sharing of best practice within the supply chain community and the sector.  support supplier development  support our Supplier Equality Duty Target (increase of 15% by 2020) 3.2 Key objectives Highways England requires specialist Technical Consultant Support to:  Support supplier briefings on the StART process  Provide skilled/appropriately experienced assessors  Conduct EDI assessments to ensure the PSED requirement has been met  Provide post assessment feedback and reporting including strengths in each area and areas for improvement.  Provide a summary report at the end of each full assessment round to give a summary of the scores, key strengths and improvement ideas in each area.