By Sarah Fitton
We think we know when a project is complete. Along the way, we’ve proposed, strategised, designed, collaborated, revised, and resubmitted. We’ve reached successive milestones, checked them off, obtained sign-off and handed over our finished work.
However, on completion, we must consider how to measure a project's success. We cannot measure it accurately unless we examine its social impact. Here, we face a challenge, because social impact can span years, decades and even centuries.
Typically, when a project ends, its social impact is only beginning. A socially successful project will only attain its success some considerable time after completion. We can argue that any project isn’t truly complete until you can properly gauge its social impact.
You can assess a project’s social value to determine its social success. But this is also where problems may arise. Social value feels more like an abstract concept than a measurable one.
What is social value?
As a term, social value sounds a little vague or academic. There are different definitions of social value, but in essence, it is about the positive impacts a project or invention can bring for those whom it affects, resulting in a better quality of life.
Quality of life transforms a space into a place, whether it’s a home, a place of work or leisure. For this to have its intended positive impact, it must be sustainable.
Like social value, sustainability was once a buzzword, so it's worth clarifying what it means in the built environment's context. To do this, we should look beyond its current green connotations.
This is the dictionary definition of sustainable: able to be maintained at a certain rate or level.
If you're designing and building something for people, it needs to offer more than an immediate solution. It must provide long-term benefits in ways that are transformative. The non-profit Future of London describes this as being a “good ancestor”.
Alternatively, if the social impact of a project is short-term, then its social value will depreciate rapidly.
Lasting social value comes from providing vital social, environmental and economic benefits to impact people's quality of life positively. These benefits include health and well-being, a sense of belonging and community and tangible economic opportunities.
The challenge is to incorporate social value into projects from the outset. For developers especially, this may feel like a hurdle when they try to balance benefits against financial risks.
Embedding social value in projects to help ensure they're socially successful requires a shift in perception. It means seeing social value not as a project cost but as an investment. However, like many such shifts, this is as much a cultural as a behavioural change, and not necessarily a straightforward one.
In 2024, the Built Environment Committee wrote to the Government following its inquiry into the application of modern methods of construction (MMC) in housing. It stated that risk aversion presented a barrier to progress. Caution runs through the construction industry. This is hardly surprising given the escalating costs involved and a frequently adversarial environment.
The Chancellor’s spending review announcement of a £39 billion investment in affordable homes should help ease risk concerns, but the tricky question remains: how to deliver socially successful projects in a climate of increasing urgency where the pressure is to provide more housing quickly and economically.
To ensure the inclusion of social value requires a people-first approach to design and development. As a first principle for creating social value, placemakers must gain a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the local communities for whom they’re planning, designing and delivering places.
In its guide to social value and the design of the built environment, the Supply Chain Sustainability School highlights the Berkley Group’s toolkit for creating successful places. This suggests three categories for placemakers to consider when engaging with communities:
Amenities and infrastructure — including community spaces, street layouts and transport links
Social and cultural life — including local identity and facilities, neighbourhood links, safety and wellbeing
Voice and influence — willingness to act and ability to influence.