With The Public Procurement Act of 2023 coming into effect in just a few months (February 24, 2025), there will be a new focus on delivering social value through construction projects.

All public sector clients will be required to formally consider ‘public benefit’ (this has never been a general procurement requirement in England before), which for architects will translate into identifiable outcomes of social value .

Any practice that was likely to be seen as having a loosely defined ‘social purpose’ will now need to be aware of the considerable amount of work that has gone into developing the resources to measure social value, which will become much more of a feature of the bidding process. in the public sector.

But what does social value mean and show in the procurement process?

Social value is not very well defined and there are several definitions. For organizations such as ACTsocial value is about impact. It is a way to quantify and value how different interventions affect people’s lives – on their well-being and quality of life.

It is different from social purpose, which is what an organization is trying to achieve, why it exists and how it contributes to society. Social value is what you do and provides a way to measure the impact of an organization’s purpose.

“For HACT, for housing associations and for the wider public and not-for-profit sector, we haven’t always had the tools to measure our impact. We have relied on traditional financial measures to describe our value, which is only part of the story. Social value gives us a way to describe our impact and means we can factor this into our decisions and investments,” says Andrew van Doorn OBE, Chief Executive of HACT.

Why is social value needed?

There is a real weakness in evidence of social value at the moment, says Andrew. To this end, HACT works with organizations in the housing sector and beyond to create and generate value for residents and communities and has developed a series of Social Value Banks.

HACT pioneered the assessment of well-being together with its partners, the global economist expert in social value Symmetrica-Jacob. They developed and released first Social Values ​​Bank of Great Britain in 2014, comprising 88 measurable outcomes, all based on established assessment methods, aligned to Treasury Green Papermeasuring social and environmental impact by improving an individual’s well-being.

More recently, HACT developed the UK Built Environment Bank, which measures the social impact of construction, development and supply chain activities.

The aim is to avoid the tendency to see social value as theoretical benefits that may emerge in the late stages of a project and incorporate measured outcomes early in the procurement process – early design decisions should be informed by social assessment information. It also means that decision-making is transparent and based on presenting the potential social impact of different choices.

Community involvement is essential and architects can be involved in prescriptive outcomes from the start. These can be assessed and supported through the early procurement stages, so that measurement and evaluation are carried out through projects in operations and communities beyond, explains Alex Lubbock, HACT Director of Operations.

Social value requirements can be placed in contracts and become part of performance management for the life of that contract. Each requirement can be a golden thread of evaluation and monitoring as the project progresses. And in doing so, assurance becomes even more important, proving that the social value that was designed in, is actually happening. It is clear that social value reporting will become as important as carbon and other ESG metrics.

HACT is very clear that if we are not delivering impact in our communities and lives are not being improved, we are not delivering social value. Procurement and design and both mean for that, but it’s what actually happens that actually matters.

Read more about how architects can add social value to projects

What other resources are there that can help?

Another tool recently developed to assess real social impact is Measurea free resource developed by three experienced partners in the UK social value space (Impact Reporting, State of Life and PRD) to enable consultants to move beyond oversimplified social value measurement.

The platform brings together valuable public data, research and other useful resources normally hidden behind paywalls to allow consultants to use what would have been proprietary data and methodologies for free.

“We want to help advance the social value agenda and help organizations move from simply counting results to measuring the true results of their initiatives,” says Matt Haworth, co-founder of Impact Reporting and MeasureUp.

MeasureUp expands to cover the value of less conventional activities that may be particularly valuable to a particular community, such as participation in religious activities, involvement in youth activities or access to green spaces.

How can EDI be present in the supply chain?

LHC Procurement GroupMeanwhile, it has pioneered procurement frameworks where the presence of an architect’s demonstrable commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) becomes part of the measure of the social value of a project itself.

Its Architect Design Services (ADS1 and ADS1.1) framework for public sector projects in London, launched in May 2020, were the first to prioritize minority groups and women-led practices. He pioneered the idea that a project provides social value by having EDI in the supply chain.

It’s a two-pronged approach to social value, explains Paul Smith, Regional Procurement Manager for the Midlands, London and South East. Candidates’ practices were questioned on how they would design social value so that the client can take their commitment to social value throughout the building process, but they were also asked what they do to improve diversity and inclusion in their practice and industry. This combination of commitment to EDI and design for social value was worth half of the quality criteria score for the upcoming updated framework.

LHC is currently tendering under the second iteration of the Architect Design Services framework (frameworks have a four-year lifespan) and Paul says the new framework will improve the EDI score and ensure more practices are included micro and small. The tender process is currently available and offers must be received by December 17, 2024.

Paul says architects with a mission of social value should look out for a number of new frameworks to be launched in the coming months, including energy efficiency, modernization and decarbonisation, modular buildings and traditional public building construction.

Thanks to Andrew van Doorn and Alex Lubbock, HACT; Paul Smith, LHC Procurement Group.

This is a professional feature edited by the RIBA Practice team. Send us your feedback and ideas.

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