Firms including Aggregate Industries, Carillion, Tarmac and HS2 are working together through the Supply Chain Sustainability School to reduce the risk of modern slavery in a way that does not "build in inefficiencies" and drive up costs, the school says.

SCSS said it will work with consultants to trace a number of high-risk products to identify suppliers and sourcing locations.

Collaboration was “also about consistency, so we don’t get 30 or 40 different versions of maps,” said Shaun McCarthy, chair of SCSS. The school will start mapping a number of high-risk construction materials “on behalf of the industry rather than expecting each individual contractor to map its own supply chain — because that’s expensive so it’s cheaper to do it once.”

The aim is to engage high-risk suppliers and provide training on modern slavery where necessary. “Audits play a part, but we’re not primarily focused on audits, we’re primarily focused on education. The purpose of the mapping exercise is to understand who those suppliers are and where they are, to get some information about them so that we can start to engage them with the school [with the training],” said McCarthy.

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