Places & Communities South:
Covering London and the South, our 370+ colleagues deliver refurbishment projects for more than 25 clients. Our goal is to be the partner of choice for local authorities, housing associations, and communities. Our adaptability and problem-solving approach mean we can tackle everything from planned maintenance, net-zero retrofits, and building safety works to large-scale regeneration.
With more than 60 active projects, we refurbish over 10,000 homes annually and put resident experience and community impact at the heart of our work. Our dedicated team collaborates with clients to maximise social value, refurbish community assets, offer apprenticeships, invest locally, and enhance local environments.
Driving the future of sustainable housing, our award-winning Retrofit Technical Solutions team brings more than a decade of experience in delivering cutting-edge, net-zero projects, including whole-house solutions.
Building stronger partnerships for long term success.
At Equans, we’re evolving our strategy to focus on meaningful partnerships, genuine collaboration, and long term value for both our clients and our supply chain. We’re proud to work with many of the UK’s leading housing associations and local authorities, delivering high quality schemes across a wide range of tenures.
Our ambition is simple: to build strong, lasting relationships with subcontractors who share our values, standards, and drive for continuous improvement.
What we ask of our partners:
As part of our Preferred Supply Chain, we ask you to commit to:
- Prioritising Equans projects — returning bids on time and providing strong pricing support for key tenders.
- Supporting pre‑construction — including estimating input, early budget advice, technical reviews, and value‑engineering ideas.
- Deploying experienced teams — ensuring safe, timely, high‑quality delivery on our sites.
- Demonstrating our Fundamentals — Our Teams, Perform, Select & Focus, and Our Planet, underpinned by accountability, respect, team spirit, and service focus.
- Engaging openly with our commercial teams — encouraging collaboration and continuous improvement.
- Using Equans’ preferred material supply routes — helping us achieve cost consistency and better value for clients.
What Equans offers in return:
We are committed to supporting your business through:
- Awarding over 75% of future work through our Preferred Supply Chain partners.
- Early visibility of pipeline opportunities to help you plan resources and capacity.
- Business stability and growth, prioritising subcontractors who support us during tender and pre‑construction stages.
- Clear communication channels, with a dedicated first point of contact.
- Additional support from our procurement and operational teams when needed.
- Annual partnership reviews to discuss performance, opportunities, and shared growth.
- Regular site‑based performance reviews to address issues quickly and constructively.
Our goal is a stronger, more efficient, and more collaborative supply chain — built on trust, performance, and shared ambition.
CLICK ON THE REGION TABS BELOW TO SEE THE KEYS AREAS OF UPCOMING WORK OUR SUPPLY CHAIN ARE INVLOVED WITH:
Cladding - approx £20m
Kitchen & bathrooms - approx £14m
Refurbshment & Cladding - approx £7.7m
Refurbishment including FRA - approx £110m
Refurbishment - approx £120m
HRB - approx £1m
Retrofit - approx £10m
Refurbishment - approx £21.5m
Window Replacements - approx £21m
Windows & Doors - approx £21m
Cladding - approx £6m
Fire Doors - approx £4m
Refurbishment - approx £68.5m
Retrofit - approx £33.5m
Decarbonisation - approx £1.4m
Fire Remediation - approx £6m
Cladding - approx £14.5m
USING APPROVED SUPPLIERS / MANUFACTUERS
Wherever subcontractors are purchasing materials and the specification is open / matches one of our approved manufactures, we encourage these to be sourced through the agreed Equans approved manufacturers and distribution routes.
Using these channels helps ensure we benefit from agreed pricing, commercial terms, and wider supply chain efficiencies.
If, in any instance, these routes are not competitive, please highlight this to the Equans team before progressing so we can review and have the appropriate conversations with our suppliers.
Your support in using the correct channels is greatly appreciated.
EstimateOne
At Equans Place & Communities South, we use EstimateOne as our primary tender management platform to make the estimating process more efficient, transparent, and collaborative with our supply chain. EstimateOne allows us to issue enquiries, share key documents, and distribute addendums in a controlled and streamlined way. Sub-contractors can easily review project information and register their interest directly through the platform, ensuring clear and consistent communication. While we aim to share only relevant documents to each trade initially—reducing unnecessary information—full document sets can always be requested via the system where required.
There is no requirement for sub-contractors to sign up to EstimateOne; however, creating an account offers additional benefits. Registered users can provide feedback when declining opportunities, helping us better understand capacity and market conditions. You can also tailor your trade preferences to ensure you receive invitations that are most relevant to your business.
We do, however, rely heavily on supply chain participation and visibility of tender responses. Our tenders and pricing strategies are built around the returns we receive, so it is important for us to understand your position on each enquiry. If you are unable to tender for any reason, this is not viewed as a negative reflection on your business—we fully recognise the pressures of workload, capacity, and market conditions. However, we do ask that you confirm your intention to tender, or decline, as early as possible via EstimateOne. This allows us to manage our enquiries effectively, maintain programme certainty, and engage alternative suppliers where required.
All enquiries will come directly from EstimateOne, but replying to the email will connect you straight to the assigned estimator, whose details are included within the enquiry. We recognise the time and effort involved in preparing competitive tenders, and we greatly value your input—successful or otherwise. You will always be informed of the outcome of projects you have tendered for, and we remain committed to providing constructive feedback wherever requested.
New enquiry from EstimateOne - example email:
P&C Subcontractor Portal
On our Subcontractor Portal you can find any latest SHEQ news, policies, resources as well as our Code of Conduct and Supplier CharterP&C Subcontractor Portal
Code of Conduct
Supplier Charter
Subcontractor Engagement & Assurance
NEWS FEED
Social Value Opportunities
Equans always welcomes our supply chain offering assistance with our Social Value initiatives and activities - whether this be through volunteering hours, materials donations or sponsorship in some of our events.
Our latest Social Value opportunities can be found here.
Learning & Development
£21 Billion is lost every year through poor quality.
Behavioural Competence can help change that.
Behavioural Competence is about whether people make the right decisions on site, not just whether they have the right qualifications.
For housebuilders and their supply chain, this matters because quality issues, rework, poor communication and missed checks rarely come from one technical gap. They often come from behaviours: people not speaking up, not following process, not taking ownership, or not challenging work that does not meet the standard.
As part of the SKEB framework, Behavioural Competence helps housebuilders understand how their teams and contractors apply skills, knowledge and experience in the real world, where build quality, safety, compliance and margin are all on the line.
Tribuco is a construction technology company helping organisations improve workforce competence, quality and compliance. Recognised as a pioneer in Behavioural Competence for the construction sector, Tribuco develops practical tools, learning resources and assessments that help businesses better understand, improve and evidence competence across their workforce and supply chain.
The project is backed by the CITB Industry Impact Fund and endorsed by the CIOB, reinforcing its role in supporting higher standards across UK construction.
SKEB stands for Skills, Knowledge, Experience and Behaviour.
The framework reflects the direction of travel set by the Building Safety Act, which places greater emphasis on demonstrating competence across the construction industry. While qualifications, training and experience remain important, organisations must also be confident that people consistently apply them in the right way.
This is where Tribuco supports the “B” in SKEB. Its Behavioural Competence assessment helps organisations understand how people behave in real site situations, including how they make decisions, follow process, communicate, take ownership and challenge poor practice.
By evidencing behaviour alongside skills, knowledge and experience, principal contractors, delivery teams and supply chains can take a more complete approach to competence, quality, safety and compliance.
The Building Safety Act places greater emphasis on demonstrating workforce competence.
The Behavioural Competence Assessment provides a practical starting point, helping you understand your strengths, identify areas for development and gain insight into how your behaviours contribute to safer, higher-quality and more compliant work.
Mental Health Support
Equans UK & Ireland supports the mental health of its supply chain through its commitment to healthy, safe, and sustainable supply chains, with a particular focus on mental wellbeing. One aspect of our approach to this includes collaboration with expert organisations and embedding mental health support within our procurement and supply chain processes.
We value to promoting awareness, training, and support mechanisms for mental health risks faced by workers across our supply chain. This activity aligns with our broader sustainability and ESG commitments, ensuring that social value and workforce wellbeing are integral to our supplier relationships.
Equans UK & Ireland has formed a formal partnership with Mates in Mind, a UK charity dedicated to transforming workplace mental health. Through this partnership, we promote mental health awareness and education across our supply chain relationships.
This collaboration includes initiatives such as sharing best practices, training programs for management and employees within supply chains, and embedding mental health support tools. We aim to reduce stigma associated with mental health and provide concrete resources and advice to workers and managers on how to identify and address mental health issues.
We leverage the Mates in Mind network and resources to enhance our leadership and workforce mental wellbeing, emphasizing safety and care beyond just our own direct employees to include contractors and suppliers.
Join our team!
Click here to see our current vacancies.