Inside Procurement Leadership in the Housing Sector with Emma Briggs

I think we'll see procurement becoming more data driven, more performance focused, or indeed more outcome driven. I think the work that many of us have been able to do because of the new Procurement act being launched, I mean, it was the biggest change in a generation, has meant that we've had to engage our internal stakeholders in a completely different way. We've had to kind of draw the line under what people knew and we've had to re educate and retrain hundreds, thousands across the sector in terms of stakeholders. And what that's given us is a chance to have a different level of influence with our boards and our exec teams. And of course, now that we've done that, or we're still in the process of doing it, I guess it's the data and the performance that they're most interested in. The Powering Procurement Podcast is brought to you by Atomis Source to contract software designed to save you time and money. Hello and welcome to Powering Procurement Podcast by Atomis, where we unpack the world of procurement and supply chain management with the help of industry leaders. I'm your host, Sian Lloyd and this is our resident expert, Gareth Birch. Hi. After 20 years in procurement, I may be billed as an expert, but believe me, I'm here to learn too. Each episode together with our expert guests, we'll dive into specific challenges and opportunities facing the procurement industry today. And we'll explore easy wins and longer term strategies to help you rise to the challenge of driving value through your work while showcasing the power of procurement. So let's get going. Hello and welcome back to Powering Procurement. Today's guest is a procurement leader operating right at the intersection of sustainability and public value. Emma Briggs is currently Director of Procurement and Sustainability at Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing, a role she's held since July 2022, following earlier positions within the organisation as Head of Procurement and Head of Category Management. For more than six years at the Housing Association, Emma has led strategic procurement activity focused on improving outcomes for communities while driving continuous improvement. Alongside her executive role, she holds a national leadership role within the sector as Commercial Lead for the National Housing Procurement Associ. So with deep experience spanning strategic sourcing, supplier management, sustainability and change leadership, she brings a thoughtful and practical perspective on what modern procurement looks like in the housing sector today and it's delight to have you on the podcast. Emma. Hello. Hi, nice to meet you all. Nice to be here. Really looking forward to the conversation today to hearing more about your career, your journey and of course your insight and experiences. But we always do like to Start at the beginning and to learn a little bit more about our guests. So I'd love to ask you really about your journey into procurement. We hear some people fell into it. For some it was a burning passion from the start. Can you tell us a little bit about where your journey began? I was the former, like many people, I didn't really set out to have a career in procurement. I fell into it. So I was one of those. So I mean, I left uni many years ago. In fact, it's the 30 year anniversary this year since I went, since I went to uni at Glasgow University and didn't really have a career path in mind. But once I had fallen into procurement via a bit of financial services, recruitment, even hr, I finally found my first role as a global sourcing buyer. And once I was in, in the buying world, in the procurement world, I just realized how much I enjoyed, I guess, the mix of like problem solving, relationship building and ultimately influencing how things actually get delivered. And what's kept me in procurement and kept me therefore quite excited about the various jobs that I've done is honestly the variety. And I know it's a bit of a cliche where no two days are the same, but it genuinely is the case. What I really love about the role is that you're kind of in an all seeing, all knowing department if you're ever in a buying role, certainly in public sector procurement, and you do genuinely get to work across the whole organization. I like being in the know and you are definitely in the know when you work in procurement. And I love the fact that procurement as a, as a discipline gives you a real voice in shaping outcomes. And it's not just about the kind of hardcore negotiation of prices, but it's genuinely about shaping outcomes and determining what those outcomes need to look like. Yeah. And I love that you are genuinely in the know. And as someone, myself, I like to be in the know. I can quite understand your perspective there. But you're in the housing sector and I, I think you've described it in the past, certainly I read as having the housing bug. So it'd be great to hear a little bit about that. And you know, what's keeping you in the housing sector, particularly within the role and within procurement. I mean, I had very little knowledge of what the housing sector was before I joined MTVH where I work. And very quickly what I learned from the people around me who had been in the industry for a long time, some of them, there is a thing called the housing bug. Right. And I think Once it hooks you, it's very hard for you to be unhooked, if I can say that. And I think it boils down to the fact that housing has such a clear social purpose. The work that we do impacts something that is so fundamentally important to anyone and it's the homes we live in. And, you know, it's, it's, for me, it's like a hygiene factor. Being a human being, we all need, you know, a warm, safe and dry place to call home. And it is ultimately that sense of purpose that certainly keeps me motivated, but I know it keeps my colleagues and my peers across the industry motivated. And it's a, it's a sector where the commercial decisions that obviously procurement are so often involved in, they genuinely affect people's lives and the quality of the lives that we're able to create for them and curate for them. And that it gives the work real meaning. And I guess once you've experienced that, it's really hard to imagine doing anything else. I can't imagine a day where I would potentially go back into a hardcore profit making entity because the meaning has genuinely has so much personal value and personal fulfillment. That's really wonderful to hear. And you're actually seeing the results on the end users, on effectively, you know, of your customers or the residents. So that's absolutely fantastic to hear. That personal connection is so powerful. Inevitably, there will be challenges though, and we know that, you know, challenges within procurement industry in general, that's what keeps you on your toes and that's what makes people great leaders in terms of how they can step up to the challenges, how they meet challenges and how they make things work. It is a complex area that you're working in. I mean, how do you meet those challenges? What do you see as the key focus area, particularly as a procurement leader now in 2026? Yeah, you're absolutely right. There are so many challenges. You know, housing is a highly regulated sector. There are many, many new and existing regulations. Certainly for 2026 is a big year. There's a very long list of new regs and laws that will apply to social landlords. And I guess therefore 2026 for me is it's about getting even clearer on performance and the outcomes that that performance delivers. But so really understanding what our contracts are delivering day to day, really getting under the skin of both the contractual requirements, you know, that we have with our suppliers, but also developing and delivering better and stronger relationships with our supply chain. So, of course, data and insight are a big focus already, but will be even More so this year alongside of course, sustainability and building safety, which continue to grow in importance, really. And of course, value for money remains critical. You know, many, many procurement leads will talk about delivering value for money. And it's a difficult concept to try and get your head round. We all report it in different ways and the data and the insight are really important, but actually it's going back to basics as well. So I guess I would sum 2026 up is about performance, but also getting back to basics and really trying to understand what value means to us. And actually the value in anything, quite frankly, whether it's social value or commercial value, value for money, that value needs to be determined and is described only by our residents, our customers. And so really getting back to basics to understand and know our customers better, understand their issues, their desires, their aspirations, so that we can start to build clearer plans that deliver on that. And so yeah, to sum up, I mean, it's kind of it's performance, it's back to basics, but it's also putting the customers at the heart of what we do. And I suppose that comes down an awful lot to relationships as well, doesn't it? And the importance of relationships. Absolutely. So I mean, having come from the private sector where the concept of supplier relationship management or srm, you know, has been around for decades, quite frankly, I brought the concept to housing and it's can't just be, you know, relationship management can't just be a nice thing to have like a tick box exercise. It has to drive real value and it does require people to change the way that they approach things. It potentially is quite challenging to existing relationships that people have to try and put the numbers and the performance around these relationships. You know, you're trying to in effect use qualitative data to drive a quantitative outcome. And that's never easy in any situation. But it is so important, and you're right, the relationship itself is about being deliberate about what those relationships need to deliver and communicating that. Right. So it's about getting in front of those suppliers and with our stakeholder, our internal stakeholders to understand and connect the dots so that everyone is clear on the value we're trying to deliver, clear on the performance that is required, clear on the contractual deliveries. But I mean, it ultimately starts with relationships, you know, because when things go wrong, if you've got a strong foundation, a strong relationship foundation that you can rely on, it makes all those problems seem smaller. That's really good insight and advice. And I think as you say, it works across both of the sectors. Doesn't it? And to bring back to housing particularly, that is a complex area. Challenges, as we've spoken about. And it can sometimes be a balancing act, can't it, in terms of what you, in your role, as you've outlined already, really need to deliver. Would you say that there are differentiators, though, for housing procurement against other regulated sectors? Yeah, sure. I mean, I guess it kind of goes back to what I said earlier around. The biggest difference is that everything we do has a human impact and a real kind of core human impact around the fact that we are providing and maintaining people's homes. So, so we're not just buying a service. Yeah, we're, we're, we're buying a service in order to positively influence someone's living experience, someone's home. And I guess that's what kind of makes the sector unique, I guess, compared to other regulated or public sector departments. And I guess then you mix in the regulatory expectations, so the stringent safety requirements, the social value expectations and of course, the budget pressures. It is a lot to balance, like you say. And so it's no surprise that it's, it's, it's. You've heard that before. And I guess the combination of the human impact and all the kind of regulatory expectations and stuff, the combination of those things makes housing and procurement, specifically within housing, uniquely challenging. But as I've hopefully made clear, it's also really rewarding. Yeah. So when you get it right, or indeed when you get it wrong, but you get the chance to fix things or improve things, it's incredibly rewarding. Yeah, no, that has definitely come across in bucket loads, Emma, of. And so important, I think, as well. And something that you can't really say enough is it. And I know that that's going to really resonate and land well with the listeners as well. In terms of. You were talking about challenges and pressures. What about scrutiny? And you know, there's scrutiny from regulators, isn't there scrutiny from boards, from tenants, from people who live in your homes. You know, where does procurement within your sector feel the biggest pressures and challenges, would you say, today? I think it's the fact that procurement are right in the middle of all of those competing demands is probably where I'd describe the biggest pressure, really. Procurement is expected to save money. We're expected to improve quality outcomes, we're expected to support sustainability initiatives, obviously provide assurance that we are compliant. We are expected to keep regulators and our boards confident, but we're expected to do that all at once. So we're right in the middle of the thick of it really. We're in the thick of everything. So. And I guess the other thing to mention, which I haven't talked about much yet, is the suppliers we deal with. So we've got about 2,000 suppliers that we deal with on a regular basis. They are also under their own pressures. Right. So following all the various big events in the last five to 10 years around Brexit and Covid, those things have fundamentally changed. The supply chains that we buy from, they're under their own pressures around the cost of labour, cost of materials. You know, they have their own budgetary pressures and that massively affects the market. And procurement have had to learn how to kind of deal with that and design and deliver procurement processes that help to alleviate those issues. So I mean really procurement then has become the place where everything meets. And I see our role as one to bring structure and I guess and clarity to it. And that is, that's like that, I guess that then links to the point that I made that every, no two days are the same, every day is different. You know, the variety is, is incredibly huge. But ultimately you boil down the role that we have in terms of dealing with pressure. It's about structure and it's about clarity. And I think something that you touched on earlier about relationships as well is, is key there as well. And obviously you were talking about the importance of communication and if we do explore a more now about suppliers, obviously they play such a significant role in successful procurement and you said that you had brought some of your previous experience into this role in terms of supplier relationship management. It would be really great to understand a little bit more about that and how that has evolved over your career. Yeah, I guess earlier in my career, probably in the private sector, I'd say more than anywhere else, the approach to supplier relationship management was. How do I describe it? I guess quite a tick box exercise. There were certain activities and things you had to do in order to achieve things like, you know, making sure there were contracts, making sure those contracts had the right KPIs, having formal meetings and regular meetings with suppliers. And we were doing srm. Yeah, we were doing that supplier relationship management. But I guess now it's much more about having real conversations. Maybe it's an age thing too where you get a little bit more authentic and real and you know, comfortable in your own skin so that you can start to have arguably some difficult conversations or real conversations because it's asking suppliers and trying to understand what their pressures are. So. And then sharing what ours are and having honest and upfront conversations about the pressures we're both under and how we might work better together to alleviate some of that. So I guess I'm clearer up front now about in terms of my approach to supplier relationship management. I try to set realistic expectations, you know, ones that are actually achievable, so you can feel that sense of success and importantly so that you, if you, if you pull together, bespoke development plans or improvement plans, you kind of know when to stop too. Because good enough is good enough. Right. And ultimately, like you say, I try to build relationships that are meaningful and where people feel comfortable raising issues early, whether that's leading and managing my team or indeed the supplier relationships and of course stakeholder relationships too. Because I just think, you know, doing all of that upfront in a really real and authentic way, it kind of just leads to better outcomes for everyone. And also, I suppose in some cases you are looking for that long term relationship as well, that ongoing relationship that you can develop that can be absolutely key and particularly perhaps within your sector as well. Really great to hear about how your approach perhaps has evolved over your career. What about the approach from suppliers? Have you seen a difference in the way that they now engage or are prepared to engage perhaps? Yeah, definitely. I guess since we were deliberately vocal about the fact we were launching a supplier relationship management initiative a few years ago now, suppliers couldn't wait to get involved. I guess they finally felt that they had a voice outside the usual meetings which are taking place, which were quite tactical and KPI driven, almost a telling off sometimes some of the suppliers, I'm sure, and I guess suppliers are, therefore they always were willing to get involved, but we've now given them a route to do that and they get involved much earlier now, which is really great. So they're not just responding reactively to a brief, they're actually helping us to shape it. You know, we proactively do early market engagement. So before there's even a procurement. Well, there might be one in the pipeline, but it hasn't come to fruition yet. They're helping us to shape what that specification looks like and they're thoroughly enjoying having a voice, voice in that process. There's more openness too. Yeah, so there's both from both sides. We're getting way better at sharing things that we think suppliers need to know, warts and all. And they have a much better understanding of the pressures that housing associations are under, as do we have a better understanding of the pressures they're under. But also it's not just about the pressures, it's about understanding their aspirations and their motivations for their businesses. Because when you understand their why and they understand our why, they often align. It's about making people's lives better ultimately. And all the variations and specific, you know, nature of what a specific supplier might do that in terms of what that means to them. And I guess the relationships ultimately feel much more collaborative than it ever used to be. And don't get me wrong, it's not like that for all suppliers. Right. So we focused initially on our strategic suppliers of those, you know, we have and will continue to have long term relationships with. And it's been so enlightening and so often heartwarming actually to really understand their why and what motivates them every day to keep doing what they're doing and for them to understand the same for us, that's really important, understanding the why. And really I was thinking when you were talking and explaining really very well about what you're doing and the new that you've brought in, that could I suppose help towards balancing risk management as well. Definitely creating more innovation. Oh definitely. And I guess risk management is always, whatever job you're in, there's always risks, right? And I think because we're highly, highly regulated as a procurement public with class as public sector procurement practitioners, but risk management and supplier management, they kind of go together, right? So strong relationships make risk easier to manage because you get honesty and visibility earlier. And I guess I'm a big believer in proportionality. So risk is all about the mitigations, the controls that you can put in place. And when you understand those relationships better and have a deeper understanding of the motivations and therefore, you know, discussions about the risks that ultimately could happen, the controls that you then need to put in place need to be proportionate to the situation you're in. So controls need to make sense. They don't, they shouldn't cause unnecessary administration or workload burden for whoever, whoever in both, both teams. And I guess it comes back to my point earlier where you asked, you know, what are the focus areas for you? It's about the data ultimately then. So when you combine good data with open conversations because you're trying to build stronger relationships and deliberately stating that as your intention, you ultimately get partnerships that are both safe or safer at least and innovative. And I, so I think, you know, risk management, like I say, and that supplier relationship is they're combined, they are one and the same thing. They totally go together. Now I'd like to take you perhaps to your other role, because I would love to hear a bit about that wider within the section. So it's the commercial lead for the National Housing Procurement association, which I understand, emma, is the UK's first dedicated housing procurement association. So tell us a bit about that. It sounds really interesting and I guess you know what you're achieving there and what the future ambition is as well. Yeah, great. Thank you for bringing it up, because it's an incredibly important association that myself and some peers set up a couple of years ago now. And unsurprisingly, it was born out of work that one of my colleagues in the sector had undertaken, and it was specifically the work that he'd undertaken was originally associated with the New Procurement Act. So the Cabinet Office approached chap called John Wallace, and he was asked to basically pull together a list of who all the procurement people were within Housing. He became the special point of contact for the Cabinet Office as they rolled out the New Procurement Act. And that was an awful lot of work because there's about 1300 housing associations in England and Wales and it had never been pulled together in one place before. So John worked tirelessly, quite frankly, at pulling that information together. And once he'd done it, he achieved what the cab office had asked and we had a contact list, if you like. But John then saw through that and realised that that piece of work shouldn't just sit there and needed to be used in a really meaningful way. And so I know he and some others had the initial idea. I can't claim credit for the initial idea. I got involved once the idea was up and running, to create this National Housing Procurement association, because what was really clear is that although things are getting better and they have got incredibly good in the last couple of years, the position of housing was fairly underrepresented from a public sector point of view. So there's lots of different bits of public sector procurement. But housing was quite underrepresented. There was no membership association that existed for procurement people within housing, and they do exist for other bits of the public sector. And John saw this opportunity to create one and so we did, and it's been brilliant. So I was appointed commercial lead for the new nhpa, as we call it, the National Housing Procurement association, and it's about lifting the whole sector, it's about giving the sector a voice. So there's a lot of lobbying and liaising with various trade bodies. So, like the CIH, even the regulator, certainly the Cabinet Office, even SIPs, and what we've done, we focused on building capability Capacity, collaboration, all the C words. And we've positioned ourselves as a membership organisation available to any procurement professional within housing. And the role of the NHPA is to share good practice at its core and ultimately try to create more consistency across housing providers. Because to come back to the suppliers, many of us are often buying the same things at the same time from the same suppliers. Yet suppliers will tell you they get a very different, a very different approach from. For. Sorry, they get a very different approach from many of us all trying to ultimately achieve the same thing and it can be quite confusing for them. So my role as commercial lead is to try and understand, going back to understanding what suppliers are looking for, how they can add value and create more consistency across the housing, across the housing sector for those suppliers and for the members. And I guess the sector is so varied that bringing people together and building confidence and even sometimes just sharing our woes has, has, has built a real community that can really move things forward. And it is, is something I have done alongside my main role and I personally have got an awful lot out of it. It's just, it's, it's a, it's a great opportunity to meet my peers from all across the country and it's naive. When a problem's shared, it's halved, isn't it? And I truly believe in that. There's tons of examples of where that has happened. So, yeah, it's early days, I guess, with the nhpa. We launched not quite a year ago and there was an incredible take up on the membership and we're obviously, all of us are doing this alongside our main roles, so it's just about finding the time to dedicate to it, to ultimately deliver meaningful stuff to our members. So we're working on, at the moment, we're working on like, the platforms that we're going to use to try and build, you know, to avoid kind of relying on emails, we're working on the platforms that we're going to use to do that collaboration and share good practice. We're hoping also to offer mentorship opportunities and of course engage with suppliers, which is my, my main role as commercial lead. Well, it's great to hear about that and thanks for sharing it with us today and hopefully that will be really useful to some of our listeners as well within that sector. So great to hear about the work that's happening now, but also the ambition as well going forward with that one. And in terms of, perhaps just before our final question, which we ask all of our guests on the podcast, a closing thought perhaps for you in terms of, I guess, optimism for 2026 as we go ahead. We're already into it now, it seems to be flying by. But in terms of housing procurement, how do you see the next 12 months? I think we'll see procurement becoming more data driven, more performance focused, or indeed more outcome driven. I think the work that many of us have been able to do because of the new Procurement act being launched, I mean, it was the biggest change in a generation, has meant that we've had to engage our internal stakeholders in a completely different way. We've had to kind of draw the line under what people knew and we've had to re educate and retrain hundreds, thousands across the sector in terms of stakeholders. And what that's given us is a chance to have a different level of influence with our boards and our exec teams. And of course, now that we've done that, or still in the process of doing it, I guess it's the data and the performance that they're most interested in. You know, if things are going to change, if we want to try and do things differently, what's the benefit is the kind of questions we're being asked now. So we're in a really fortunate position because many of us worked really hard to get to that level of influence, if you like. But the hard work really starts now. You know, we thought that was hard a couple of years ago, but actually the hard work starts now because we have positioned ourselves as not just tactical, you know, with a tactical approach to how we might run a tender or how we might want to source and select a contractor to deliver something or other. But instead we're being. We've told them we can be strategic enablers and now they're saying, well, go on then, prove it. So, you know, we've done the convincing. It's now about all about the delivery. And I think it boils down to the fact that organizations, wherever you work, they ultimately want clear insight into how contracts are performing. You know, we spend billions on contracts and we should know in way more detail about how they're performing and what value they're delivering, but also linking back to the customer, determining what value looks like for them, and making sure that the value within a contract directly links to the value a customer is expecting. And of course, I haven't mentioned sustainability all that much as yet, but sustainability is such a core component of any business decisions that any industry is making. But then specifically for housing safety, building safety, so fire safety is going to stay high on the agenda. As I've said before, so I am incredibly optimistic. I think the challenges are pushing the profession forward in a really positive way, despite the fact they remain challenges. But I think the hard work myself and my team and many of my peers have been putting in the last couple of years just because of the new act and the changes that that has brought, the challenges are real, but the influence we've had has meant, you know, there is more of a people are pulling the information from us rather than what I feel like we've been pushing the information up. So, you know, like I say, we've positioned ourselves as strategic enablers and now it's just we need to deliver it. But I'm incredibly optimistic about it despite the challenges. That's great to hear and it really sounds, it's a really crucial, a key and important time, isn't it, from what you're saying, but with optimism and I suppose the other O word opportunity as well that all of that brings. We are coming towards the close of the podcast and it's been great to hear about everything that you've been doing with the sector, but also what's coming through a lot is what yet more you want to do and what yet you want to achieve and really having a very clear vision about that as well. Emma we always ask our guests for a final thought around a little bit looking back, but also about where they are now and what's important to them within their career in procurement. Because the whole point of this podcast is to shine a light on this sector and to highlight what's going on, what's working well while acknowledging the challenges, but also as information for people who might be thinking about a career in procurement themselves. So it'd be great to hear from you about, from where you are now, your standpoint and lens, why you feel happy that you are in procurement as a career. I was, I was trying to explain this to my 16 year old stepdaughter actually the other night she was, she was asking me what do you actually do you know, why do you love it so much? So hopefully I've prepped for this question, but I think it comes back, I said earlier the variety. So no two days are the same and I guess that was probably what initially piqued my interest in procurement. There's more senior I've got, it's probably more, it's the variety of course, but it's probably also the influence I can have and getting to work across the whole organization to identify, define and ultimately solve problems, to build relationships and shape how things are delivered. Yeah. And I think that keeps me happy on a daily basis. More than happy, more than happy, Incredibly fulfilled, in fact. And I think the housing element of that procurement role is, is also what I've referred back to in that the impact, the positive impact you can have to genuinely improve people's lives. And like I said right at the beginning, I never planned to go into procurement. And I hope that that some of what I've said has highlighted the fact that the procurement, procurement as a discipline is so full of opportunity and so full of purpose. And I'm really glad it's where I ended up, which is a great final thought. Really wonderful to have your perspective and, well, your insight throughout the podcast. Emma, you've been a joy to have on. Thank you so much for being our guest for this episode. And if, if you've enjoyed this episode, don't forget to follow us because we have many more episodes that you can listen to wherever you get your podcasts. And we will be back with another Powering Procurement very, very soon. Thanks, Emma. That wraps up this episode of Powering Procurement. We hope you enjoyed that as much as we did. Visit our website@atomist.co.uk or follow us on LinkedIn to continue the conversation. Remember to subscribe on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you choose to listen. Thanks for joining us and see you next time on Powering Procurement.