What we do

We help organisations identify, optimise, measure and communicate the social value of buildings places and programmes.

We follow the tried and tested approach promoted by Social Value International to ensure that our work is reliable, consistent and auditable.

We focus on the key areas of health, safety, education & skills, work & job quality, work-life balance, subjective wellbeing, environmental quality, income & wealth, social connections, housing & neighbourhood, and civic engagement to describe and value the changes experienced by the people.

Our work uses accounts from the people affected by change, statistics on prevailing social and environmental conditions and precedent studies into previous interventions.

Our findings and recommendations supplement and support conventional market-based valuation methods to enhance decision-making and reporting.

Take a copy of our brochure

Click to download

Identify

Very often organisations and teams are unaware of or undervalue the impact they and their activities are already having have on people, place and the environment.

We help shine a light on this by working closely with a variety of people across a range of disciplines. This includes internal stakeholders and external stakeholders to map how an intervention is currently affecting people.

This establishes a social value baseline that describes both the kinds of people affected and the changes (both positive and negative) they experience.

We use a range of efficient and proven methods to carry out this work. These include stakeholder mapping, interviews, Vox Pops, community events and focus groups.

The findings can be brought to life by using quotations, anecdotes and case studies portrayed in a range of ways which could include videos, infographics to supplement or support text-based reports.

Optimise

Helping organisations and teams to optimise the social value they can create.

We use accounts taken from people, prevailing socio-economic data and precedents of similar interventions to enhance the social value that can be generated.

Working closely with commissioners, policymakers, designers and other agents for change, we can assist the decision-making process by helping to model the impact of various options under consideration and rank their forecasted performance in terms of social value generated.

Measure

We believe that change is best understood though the people who experience it. This why we follow a stakeholder-led process and places significant importance on accounts from people.

We use these accounts from people to calculate a monetary value on social and environmental change and to generate a social return on investment ratio.

We do this by using a range of accepted and robust welfare economic approaches such as Social Return on Investment, Ecosystem Services Analysis and the social impact elements of Life Cycle Assessment.

To understand the real effects of change, we believe that measurement needs to happen over a period of time rather than as a one-off exercise. Very often our work starts with a forecast of the expected impacts during the planning phase. This is then followed up by an evaluation of actual impacts during the post-implementation/occupation phase. This evaluation is usually done annually over a period of five or more years.

Communicate

We are very careful to communicate information, findings, data, and opinions in a way that is understandable to all stakeholders. This includes receiving and contributing stakeholders and those closely associated with an intervention.

By doing this we can help all of these stakeholders understand hopes, fears, challenges, priorities, decisions and choices and explain how the intervention is performing against expectations.

Monitoring and reporting on impact over time provides a basis for course correction and continuous improvement at both project/policy and organisational level and helps to enhance long-term relationships between all stakeholders over the project life-cycle.

Communication includes both qualitative, quantitative and financial aspects of the social value created. It describes the changes and explains the assumptions and decisions made in a way that is understandable for the whole audience. Our reports are concise and use a format that allows comparison with other interventions.