The construction industry, historically driven by metrics such as efficiency, speed, and financial performance, is undergoing a significant transformation. Increasingly, the focus is shifting towards the social value that projects can bring to communities, emphasising a more holistic approach to development.

Kieran Ronnie is head of Social Value for AECOM, he highlights that this isn’t necessarily a brand new idea.

“For example, in America, there’s a lot of talk around social environmental justice. And we see in Canada, and then also with our Australian and New Zealand business, it’s around kind of First Nations and indigenous people’s rate. But in January of 2013 in the UK the Social Value Act was passed, and over the last 10 years, the practice of ESG, Community Engagement, or Corporate Social Responsibility, has become Social Value.”

What is Social Value

In the UK The Procurement Policy Note 06/20 requires projects of over certain procurement thresholds to provide social value.

This can mean encouraging local employment or putting resources into local community projects.

Olivia Sutcliffe is social value associate at Savilles and the founder of Young Professionals in Social Value.

“I think when that came out, that was a real attitude shift, both for the public sector because a lot of the public sector realises a central government has to deliver it, and that’s a mandatory requirement for them. But as a result of that, it’s filtered down into the private sector.”

Social Value is not about providing one size fits all solutions to communities, it’s about looking at a project’s impact and the needs of local communities and attempting to make a meaningful difference.

Sutcliffe explains, “Social value is us giving back to communities where communities most need it. And I say where communities most need it is because social value shouldn’t be a blanket that we just throw out the same kind of social value initiatives, it needs to be based on the community needs, it needs to be based on the location and based on what actually can make a difference and make an impact.”

Working in Social Value

Social value has come out of corporate social responsibility, which first emerged in the 1950’s. Ronnie says the key difference between social value and CSR is how embedded as a practise it should be within a company

“But if we’re thinking specifically about social value, the way I see the evolution of it from something like CSR, is that it’s a lot more strategic, it’s a lot more formalised and it should be a lot more embedded into the business. So CSR is something that can be seen sometimes as a bit of an add on to the business” Ronnie says.

Social Value is a new position for most companies and because of that it can be difficult for people new to the position to get their voices heard. As a practice is still in an early stage, how it will be implemented, both internally within organisations and out in the real world, will come down to those who work in the field now.

That is why Sutcliffe set up Young Professional in Social Value.

“I set it up because I felt like I wanted to see more representation of young professionals. And I mean, this in a broad sense that, at that time, my job was to be an advisor. And I worked with a lot of different businesses who were supplying the public sector, but also the public sector. And it was a lot of young professionals who were kind of lumped with the social value element of the bid.”

Often social value roles are poorly defined and often have very unclear career progression pathways. This is something AtkinsRéalis are trying to change by creating social value apprenticeships, and Harry Walsh is one of those apprentices.

“So I was the first social value apprentice, taken on by the business. So each month are part of the business lead meetings, where all social value leads across all the businesses in AtkinsRéalis come together, and basically talk about social value and understand about the implications that we might have had going forward or in the past.” 

The role is structured to give apprentices the opportunity to experience various different parts of the business and are encouraged to participate from a social value perspective.

Measurement Challenges

One criticism of social value is that its “value” can be hard to measure through traditional metrics, which often fail to capture the full scope of community benefits, as Ronnie explains, “Certainly, there is a lot of confusion within the market around measurement frameworks, standards and, you know, different methodologies, and kind of behind the scenes calculators that can create social value reports.”

While reporting specific numbers based on a projects outcome can be difficult in social value, Ronnie says this isn’t an issue as long as people are transparent when it comes to reporting on impact. 

“It’s something that we need to be very mindful of. There are some big numbers that float around on social value, particularly some major infrastructure projects. So when we think about the social value principles, don’t over claim, be transparent, things like that. We need to make sure we’re holding ourselves to account for that.”

However Sutcliffe believes that the social value sector could benefit from more clarity and consistency when it comes to measuring and reporting on a projects impact

“I think we need to be more aligned with how we’re all measuring and reporting on social value. I think we need to be speaking a common language and we need to have the same principles embedded in how we’re measuring that social value. I feel sometimes the impact is lost in the messaging sometimes when we talk about the reporting the measurement of it and actually that’s what we all care about. So aligning on that measurement in the common language that we’re speaking cross-sector in social value is really important.”

Community-Centric Projects

Ronnie says working in social value its the people you work with and the projects you work on that are what count.

“We ran a programme with social enterprise called the Line Collective, we run an ESG Launchpad programme, and we’ve now been able to support a couple of them into employment, which is great, having, you know, met these young students and been really inspired by them and they’ve now started are all AECOM so you know, there’s, there’s large projects with big numbers, there’s annual reports that you can do, but actually I find the people stories are the ones that are more impactful, and certainly the ones that stick with me the most.”

Despite having been in the industry only a year there are already so many projects that Walsh is proud to have been a part of. But the one that stands out most was his work on a project in a special educational needs school. 

“We put on workshops for the students that really inspired and hopefully will provide opportunities for them in the future. I found great pride in taking part in this project.” Walsh said.

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