Canada—Supply Chain Assessment

The Province of Nova Scotia was seeking opportunities to leverage its existing industrial base to expand economic opportunities in energy and technology sector investments. To support this effort, the Nova Scotia Department of Energy and Mines and the Offshore Energy Research Association contracted DAI’s Sustainable Business Group (SBG) to carry out a pilot offshore energy and technology sector supply chain assessment. The assessment identified the global competitiveness of Nova Scotian supply chains to bid on international procurements in the offshore energy and technology industries and analyze existing gaps and strengths in the supply chains’ competitiveness. This pilot assessment performed a competitive analysis of two supply chains in Nova Scotia, completed 14 enterprise-level assessments across the two supply chain categories, and assessed options for the application of an electronic local supplier registration database. The pilot used a data-driven approach to understand the existing capacities in Nova Scotia and apply analytics to identify the strongest opportunities and potential interventions for three tiers of stakeholders: individual enterprise, government, and business associations.

The assessment identified strengths and weaknesses of supply chains across ten scoring criteria and identified high-level recommendations to address the gaps. The Offshore Energy Research Association and Nova Scotia Department of Energy and Mines asked SBG to conduct a follow-up analysis to determine the value of the assessment from the perspective of participating businesses to inform the next phase of the assessment. Subsequently, Nova Scotia Department of Energy and Mines asked SBG to travel to Halifax and deliver a half-day workshop to local companies interested in learning more about the assessment and how they can be more competitive in the offshore energy sector.