The charter was signed by Carillion Chief Executive, John McDonough, and Chief Executive of Defence Estates, Vice Admiral Tim Laurence.

The MoD defines sustainable procurement as a process whereby organisations meet their needs for goods, services, works and utilities in a way that achieves value for money on a whole life basis in terms of generating benefits to society and the economy, while minimising damage to the environment.

The Sustainable Procurement charter was originally developed by the MoD for use by its Prime Contracting suppliers, but Carillion has made the decision to extend it across all of its MoD contracts.

John McDonough said: “The MoD is Carillion’s biggest customer and we have an order book of some £5bn worth of work over a period of 30 years. We are delighted to be working in partnership with Defence Estates to promote estate-related sustainable development processes and procurement procedures.

"In accordance with the charter we will work together with the MoD to educate all layers of our supply chain in the principles of sustainable procurement.”