Sir Robert McAlpine – Committed to a year on year increase of social value

Sir Robert McAlpine is one of the UK’s leading building and civil engineering companies, relied upon for the design and development of some of the country’s most iconic buildings. Social value reporting had always been delivered as part of the company’s activities to some extent, but the business sought a way to improve and introduce more structure to its social value reporting mechanism as part of its sustainability strategy.

Within this strategy, Sir Robert McAlpine sought a way to ensure that social value outputs were validated through an accredited third party to demonstrate their positive impact as well as alignment with government guidelines.

One key element was ensuring flexibility in social value practices. Any software implemented needed to allow Sir Robert McAlpine to set key targets on what should be delivered through its activities, while not strictly mandating how those targets need to be met.

How did Loop help?

Firstly, the software reflects Sir Robert McAlpine’s innovative social value approach, allowing it to go beyond simply evaluating the activity already delivered. Secondly, through the use of our software, SRM is able to set a social impact forecast at the outset of any project, identify bespoke activities to deliver social value and set target dates for those activities too.

Moreover, a key to the successful implementation of the tool within Sir Robert McAlpine’s practices was the development of a bespoke section of the calculator. A specific area has been created for Sir Robert McAlpine to chart the themes, outcomes and measures that are relevant to its activities in a way that reflects how the business works.

This bespoke area included terminology tailoring to ensure activity was streamlined into the language all employees are familiar with, and it is coordinated with practices and processes across the whole business.

"Being able to forecast the social value a scheme can deliver is becoming increasingly important to our clients, so having a tool that allows us to do this, as well as effectively benchmark throughout the lifespan of a project and fully evaluate at completion is really powerful.

It’s also really important to us that any organisations we work with on elements of our strategy align to best practice across the industry. The fact that Loop and its tool are partners with Social Value UK and Social Value International was a real selling point and helps us show our clients – particularly local authority clients – that we are following the same government-led guidelines.”

Anna Kennedy
Regional Sustainability Manager.