Week 5 of 6 Teaching week
EcoVadis
Methodology, scoring and the 2026 changes; what evidence gets rejected and why; diagnosing a low score as a policy, action, result or documentation gap.
You build this week: An evidence inventory and a gap register, mapped by hand.
Two live sessions of three hours, Thursday and Sunday, plus a take-home between them. The Sunday closes with a timed manual exercise — your benchmark for next week.
Thu · Day 9 · Foundation · Aayush Anand
EcoVadis I — Methodology, Scoring and the 2026 Changes
By the end of this session you can
- Explain the four themes, the 21 criteria and how criteria are activated for a given company
- Apply the Policies–Actions–Results model and the seven management indicators
- Read a scorecard and interpret medal thresholds, theme minimums and 360° Watch effects
- Account for the 2026 methodology updates in how a submission is prepared
Three-hour agenda
| 00:00–00:20 | What a rating is for | Why buyers use EcoVadis; what a rating does and does not evidence; the commercial stakes for Demo Co., whose contract renewal depends on it. Rating vs certification vs assurance. |
| 00:20–00:55 | Methodology architecture | Environment, Labor and Human Rights, Ethics, Sustainable Procurement — and the 21 criteria beneath them. Activation by sector, size and geography; why two companies never sit the same assessment. |
| 00:55–01:25 | Policies, Actions, Results | The three pillars and their weightings; the seven management indicators and which pillar each feeds. |
| 01:25–01:35 | Break | |
| 01:35–02:10 | Scoring and medals | Percentile thresholds — Platinum top 1%, Gold 5%, Silver 15%, Bronze 35%, no theme below 30. Twelve-month validity and the reassessment cycle. |
| 02:10–02:45 | The 2026 methodology updates | Ten changes: GRI "with reference" credited at 75; Scope 2 split location/market; new risk-preparedness questions; broadened certification evidence; audit reports admissible; "in-progress" certificates discontinued; coverage on employees or sites; CSDDD-aligned rewording; a two-day error window. |
| 02:45–03:00 | Reading a scorecard | An anonymised real scorecard read together: strengths, improvement areas, theme-by-theme diagnosis. |
Exercise
Predict the activated criteria and theme weightings for Demo Co. from its sector code, size and geography, then compare against the model answer.
Take-home
Inventory Demo Co.'s existing documents against the four themes and mark what you believe would be accepted, rejected, or is missing entirely.
Sun · Day 10 · Foundation · Aayush Anand
EcoVadis II — Evidence Standards, Diagnosis and the Improvement Roadmap
By the end of this session you can
- Apply EcoVadis evidence standards and predict which documents will be rejected
- Diagnose whether a low score is a policy gap, an action gap, an evidence gap or a documentation gap
- Build a costed, sequenced improvement roadmap prioritised by score gained per unit of effort
- Handle the Sustainable Procurement theme, where most manufacturers underperform
Three-hour agenda
| 00:00–00:20 | The questionnaire in practice | Flow, timing, document limits, who must be involved, and the mistakes that cost points before the assessment begins. |
| 00:20–01:00 | Evidence standards | What counts: official, dated, correctly scoped, current. What gets rejected: undated policies, unsigned codes, expired certificates, group documents for site-level claims, screenshots without provenance. |
| 01:00–01:30 | Diagnosis workshop | Working backwards from a poor scorecard to root cause. The uncomfortable finding: most lost points are documentation gaps, not performance gaps. |
| 01:30–01:40 | Break | |
| 01:40–02:20 | The improvement roadmap | Sequencing by score-per-effort. Quick wins vs structural work. 360° Watch and adverse external findings. Managing what you promise the buyer. |
| 02:20–02:45 | Sustainable Procurement | The theme most manufacturers fail: supplier code of conduct, risk assessment and segmentation, cascading requirements, corrective action — and the evidence each needs to exist as. |
| 02:45–03:00 | Timed manual build | Map Demo Co.'s 40-document evidence pile against the activated criteria by hand. Times recorded as the Week 6 benchmark. |
Exercise
Timed manual mapping of the evidence pile to activated criteria, with an accept/reject/gap judgement and a reason for each rejection.
Take-home
Draft a one-page improvement roadmap for Demo Co.'s weakest theme, with owners and a realistic timeline.
