The Director of Construction Impact Frameworks (CIF), Sara Lawton issued a ‘Call to Action’ at the recent Frameworks Conference, she told delegates “We are inviting the whole of the public sector, along with the construction industry to join us in championing responsible commissioning”. Construction Impact Frameworks has worked to reinvest in the third sector having “invested in over 30 voluntary sector organisations” according to the Director.

Lawton was unequivocal about the need for framework providers to act, she said, “Our communities are in crisis” highlighting in-work poverty, the 210,000 children living in substandard accommodation and knife crime as emblematic of the problems faced by communities.  [emaillocker id=”71749″]

She also drew attention to a number of projects that CIF has funded through social investment,  “The booth centre supports over 200 individuals a week who find themselves homeless or at risk of becoming homeless”. Lawton credited their success with “Membership growing organically” to being as she dubbed an “Ethically-driven, public sector led framework”. CIF uses a 1.5%-3% levy that it reinvests in communities to deliver its model of social value. 

Chris Clarke, the Head of Transformation & ICT at Scape group, a public sector framework provider raised the difficulties with defining best practice “The client’s perception is public value, and public value is a shifting definition”. Clarke made a call to action of his own where he stressed the need to incorporate environmental concerns into framework provision “Environmental action is so important, we all have to do something about it in our next cycle of procurement or we’re not going to be where we need to be” 

Clarke emphasised the importance of early client engagement to ensure the best delivery of projects. The Scape Group uses the NEC4 contract suite to facilitate client engagement, which Clarke described as being the “most collaborative form of contract”. The need for contractors to have fair route to margins was also a concern of Clarke, who reiterated concerns about narrow margins in the industry. 

North West Construction Hub, a frameworks provider that was launched in 2009 by the Manchester City Council was portrayed by Mike Tyler, their Business Development Manager as being early adopters of socially responsible commissioning and best practice.  

The UK Government’s’ 1994 Latham Report and the 1998 Egan Report were referred to by Tyler as being foundational in discussion regarding best practice in the industry and influences on the development of their three frameworks. 

Tyler listed the many things that were incorporated into these frameworks’ best practice, he said: “It covered early contractor engagement, sustainable solutions, economic and environmental focus, added value, apprenticeships, carbon reduction, reduce waste and fair payment”.

Furthermore the Development Manager also spoke of their early adoption of the social value agenda, he continued: “We were ahead of the curve with the social value act of 2013, we had a group already in place, developed a plan and informed clients what could be achieved with a 20% weighting on social value.” 

Southampton is trying to ensure that they are socially responsible in their use of Frameworks, Paul Paskins, the Head of Supplier Management at the City Council, he said they were “In the process of creating a new policy on social value that would be built into the procurement policy going forward”. 

Oversaturation in the frameworks market was cited as an obstacle by Paskins, who described the market as being “congested”. Difficulties within the public sector were raised by Paskins, who said  a lack of commercial thinking was an impediment to delivering construction projects. 

Political barriers also limit attempts to maximise socially responsible spending, Paskins described how politicians “Want things that play well on the doorstep and they want things that contribute to a political ideology”. However, Paskins also noted the entire concept of social responsibility and community wealth-building was “partially politically driven”.

Debbie Hobbs, Group Director of Sustainable Business at ISG expressed hope that a standard metric of social value would emerge, she said “Social value is almost where sustainability was about 10 years ago everyone started developing their own measuring sustainable buildings then BREEAM and LEED came to the fore and everyone focused on them.” 

Hobbs gave the examples of the National TOMs and Social Profit Calculator used at ISG as effective contemporary tools. Lawton however described current calculation methods as “essentially a spreadsheet” and that they were “very subjective”, but praised government plans to mandate a 10% minimum on contracts. 

Clarke discussed the need for social values to address real social issues, he said “The news yesterday was full of the number of people of died on the street that means more to me than abstract social value.” The panel agreed on the need for social responsible commissioning, but also the need for it to be more tangible that just rhetoric. [/emaillocker]