Creating long term sustainable outcomes for the people who are the hardest to reach.
Challenge
Social value initiatives in infrastructure delivery often lack scale and sustainability and are often input, not outcome focused. While individual contractors can deliver meaningful impact, these efforts are often isolated and struggle to reach the most vulnerable groups - those considered “too hard to do on our own.”
The challenge is to design a collaborative framework that enables clients and contractors to use their collective influence and resources to deliver long-term, high-impact outcomes for those furthest from opportunity.
What will we do?
The Social Value Sprint will bring together designers, contractors, client representatives, social value specialists, academics and 3rd sector organisations to co-design a scalable framework for collective action. Starting with two key focus areas across the northeast and Essex & Suffolk. Building on real-world examples, the sprint will explore how multiple organisations can pool resources to significantly amplify outcomes.
We’ll define mechanisms for collaboration, resource sharing, and accountability - creating a blueprint that goes far beyond what individual organisations could achieve alone. Participants will work together to reframe social value delivery as a shared enterprise, shifting from isolated interventions to coordinated systems of support. We’ll examine how to overcome barriers like inconsistent commitment, data visibility, and resource alignment-developing pathways to scale interventions without losing local relevance.
How we will do it?
Throughout the sprint, participants will work together in highly collaborative sessions to map opportunities for joint impact, uncover existing barriers, and co-design solutions that unlock greater social value across the framework. We’ll draw from real-world examples to prototype how scalable models can be built and adapted to suit different contexts.
The sprint will include creative exercises, storytelling, systems thinking, and structured co-design activities. These will help the group identify where combined influence and pooled resources can deliver the biggest outcomes for communities, particularly those currently underserved. Contributions from across sectors will be welcomed to spark ideas and showcase different ways of working, helping the group shape a framework that is ambitious, practical, and ready to pilot.
Target Outcomes
By the end of the sprint, the team aims to deliver:
- A co-created framework for shared social value delivery.
- A roadmap for piloting the framework with specific focus groups
- Clear guidance for onboarding new partners, tracking outcomes, and maintaining quality.
- A roadmap for developing 3rd sector partnerships, scaling up their long-term capacity and capability through specialist volunteering and long-term partnership working.
- A roadmap to a mechanism for collecting long-term ( 5 year plus) outcome data to capture impact and monetise value.
- A potential blueprint for sector-wide replication, starting with regional priorities and scaling up.
Who will benefit from this sprint?
This sprint will benefit social value leads, project delivery teams, and partner organisations with a mandate for community investment. Hard-to-reach individuals and communities will ultimately see the greatest long-term benefit through more inclusive and effective delivery of social value inputs leading to long term beneficial outcomes. Clients and contractors will gain a replicable model for delivering social value collaboratively supporting procurement, regulatory, and reputational goals.
