According to the Green Building Council the way we measure social value from our built environment is failing the industry.
“Cities shape the way we live, work, and play,” according to chief executive officer Davina Rooney.
“A well-designed city can enhance our quality of life and improve our health and happiness. And nothing shapes cities more than our precincts, buildings, and infrastructure.”
But right now, property companies are using a “mishmash of methodologies, which is admirable, but also expensive”.
“It’s contributing to a tangle of misaligned, exclusive tools used by just a few organisations. If we continue on this path, we risk leaving people and communities behind,” Ms Rooney said.
- These issues are key the new masterclass from The Fifth Estate on 12 March, Sustainability Reporting – tools and tactics, “a survival toolkit for the people who connect the dots in our built environment”.
The GBCA in collaboration with Hassell has now released a paper to start the process of improving measurement and systems for social impact.
Social values are shifting, and it is more important now than ever that the built environment impacts positively on people’s quality of life, the paper said.
The paper focuses on best ways to measure the positive impact of buildings, places and infrastructure on a person’s environmental, economic, and social wellbeing.
Key message is that we need to take a “systematic approach to the design, creation, and measurement of social value.”
Why is it important?
According to Hassell managing director Liz Westgarth there’s been great progress in creating a more sustainable built environment but “we also need to define, measure, and report the social impact of our work and the value we contribute to creating thriving communities.”
This needs to also include economic and ecological dimensions, Westgarth said.
So far, however, “there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach. The essence of how to deliver real social value lies in the nature of the process. Social value can only be properly defined and measured by engaging with those directly and indirectly impacted by a project throughout its full lifecycle.”
According to the paper there is growing focus on social impact evidenced by World Green Building Council’s work on social values.
The federal government recently announced a ‘wellbeing’ budget and released its first National Wellbeing Framework. The framework has already been the subject of a white paper by Atelier Ten and Blix Architecture, calling on architects and designers to implement wellbeing into designs.
- See the article from The Fifth Estate here.
Across the nation, state governments have also started working on how to improve the quality of life for their communities.
So, how do we measure social impact?
According to the paper, it’s important to understand the concepts of inputs, outputs, outcomes and impacts when measuring and reporting social value. Delineating these concepts would “move measurement beyond financial contributions and towards the actual impact of a project”. Highlights of the paper include:
- inputs must encompass resources invested
- outputs represent the direct results or deliverables produced by a project, such as jobs created, greenspace provided, number of people who participated in a community event
- outcomes focus on the direct effects experienced by individuals and communities from the project
- impacts reflect long term broader changes beyond immediate outcomes and assess the sustained and transformative effect on people’s lives.
Other measurement concepts include:
- deadweight is determining how much of the desired outcome would have occurred without the project – this allows you to identify the true impact of your project
- additionality is the positive changes solely attributed to the project that would not have happened otherwise
- attribution is accurately assigning the social impact to the project, and verifying the results is indeed a direct consequence of the initiative
There are two most widely used approaches for measuring social impact:
- cost benefit analysis (CBA) quantifies the cost and benefit of an intervention and compares them to determine its overall desirability, including monetary and non-monetary factors – allowing decision makers to understand the economic feasibility of an intervention
- social return on investment (SROI) assesses value created in terms of positive changes in people’s lives in a participatory approach, including engaging stakeholders to identify and quantify social impacts, providing a ratio that indicates the societal return on resources employed
Tools and systems
According to the paper, the United Kingdom was much further ahead in measuring social values due to its Social Value Act. The UK has numerous tools and systems for measuring, quantifying, and reporting social value.
Some propriety tools and systems are provided by social housing charity HACT Social Value Bank, Social Value Portal, Thrive, Social Value Engine and Impact Reporting. Many of these tools are also aligned with the UN’s sustainable development goals as well as the UK’s social value model.
While Australia falls short in the number of measurement tools, “a few propriety tools and systems are still available”. These are:
- Australia Social Value Bank, which provides CBA used by industry and government organisations, such as Landcom
- The Property Council of Australia’s collective social impact framework reporting system, which allows member organisations to report on their social value and corporate social responsibility initiatives
- Australian Unity which uses its CSV (creating shared value) framework to calculate the social value it delivers through its business operations, which is reported in its annual report
The paper was launched last Wednesday at a panel event with Davina Rooney, Anders Uechtritz, principal at Social Ventures Australia, Sarah Breavington, general manager – social, customer and funds sustainability at Dexus, and Lauren Kajewski, director of sustainability and learning at Landcom.