The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) has published guidance to support the delivery of social value across built environment projects.
Since the launch of the Social Value Act in 2013 a significant amount of guidance on social value has been published for the built environment sector, ranging from measurement to embedding social value into procurement, planning and design.
However, according to the UKGBC, one of industry’s biggest barriers remains translating this guidance into a form which can be easily applied to the specific circumstances of stakeholder needs and the nature of individual projects.
UKGBC’s ‘Guide for Delivering Social Value on Built Environment Projects’, seeks to respond to this challenge by offering a step-by-step process for delivering social value that can be flexibly applied to any built environment project of any scale – from a single built asset to an entire town regeneration project.
Simon McWhirter, UKGBC’s Director of Communications, Policy & Places, commented: “Whether its climate change, rising energy bills or community well-being and safety, the places we live, work and play are at the forefront of many of society’s most critical issues.
“With our communities in ever more need of support, delivering social value across building projects should no longer be viewed as ‘nice to have’, but a necessity.
“Through setting out a logical process – which has been tried and tested in the real world – this guidance equips those tasked with delivering social value with an easy-to-use toolkit to ensure community and occupant needs are put front and centre as we design and deliver new developments and regeneration projects across the country.”
Building on UKGBC’s Framework for Defining Social Value, the new guidance has been developed through testing the process for delivering social value on a range of real-world case studies and applying the learnings of this exercise to refine and improve it.
Alongside an updated 8-step process, the new guide includes:
- supplementary delivery checklists for senior decision-makers to use when leading built environment projects,
- detailed guidance notes aimed at practitioners who are responsible for day-to-day project delivery,
- best practice examples.
The Guide for Delivering Social Value on Built Environment Projects is available on the UKGBC website.
