Not just apprenticeships and jobs: Social Value Toolkit for Architecture (update)

We are looking for practices and clients who would like to trial the 'beta' version of our Social Value Toolkit for Housing and Architecture over the next 6 months or so. This will take the form of a very simple post occupancy exercise with occupiers.

We've been heartened by the very considerable amount of interest in the Social Value Toolkit for Architecture over the last few months, indeed yesterday I was at the Crown Commercial Service presenting to the Construction Category Board (which has oversight over some ￡30bn of procurement a year) on this subject. An important impetus has also been provided by Anne Bentley's excellent report for the CIC Procuring for Value. It seems very clear that the social value of the building itself, its design and its impact on people has not yet really been addressed by any of the Social Value protagonists. The emphasis has been very strongly on apprenticeships and jobs, with these numbers sometimes being reported in some rather cynical ways - indeed their are some quite troubling things bordering on bribery going on in the Social Value of construction world at the moment. Do let us know if you have experience of this. We are also planning to do a project on the current procurement of social value working with CACHE.

We are consulting with a lot of people on social value. I chaired a session at the RIBA Smart Practices Conference on Social Value and Riette Oosthuizen (HTA Design LLP) and I will be leading a session on Social Value at RIBA Guerilla Tactics later in November. Eli Hatleskog and I are editing a special edition of Architectural Design on Social Value and are looking for contributions. An impressive presentation by Jateen Lad at the Article 25 Make Design Matters talk in London really showed how key Social Value is to to NGOs and funders. It seems that social value is really gaining traction.

A review of wellbeing and placemaking grey literature has revealed considerable consensus on factors that make a difference to people in their homes of places, although the terminology tends to be different. We have distilled these themes down to five headline outcomes:

?Connecting

?Active Lifestyles

?(Positive) Emotions

?Learning

?Autonomy/flexibility

?Affordability (for the inhabitants post completion)

The next step is to establish three sub-questions within each of these categories that could be used to measure social value through a very simple Post Occupancy Exercise. We've already begun this process with a student workshop with Mhairi McVicar at the Welsh School of Architecture in Cardiff and will soon be finalising the sub-questions so we can roll out the pilot programme. Please let me know if you would like to get involved or have any suggestions.

If you think the idea of measuring and indeed monetising social value is problematic I suggest you read Mariana Mazzucato's excellent 2018 book The Value of Everything. It is not something we can really avoid.