Having developed a best practice framework in collaboration with Social Value UK, we are able to accurately assess the social, environmental and economic value of our works.
We take our role in society very seriously and recognise the part our people and partners must play in contributing to the strength, cohesion and wellbeing of communities across the UK.
By clicking on the interactive Social Value and Community Investment Capability Wheel below, you can explore each facet of our expertise in this area.
Discover how we have developed a best practice framework that enables us to accurately assess the social, environmental and economic value of our works. The framework measures embedded, additional and inherent social value, and enables deep-dive analysis into our projects.
Explore our "Reading from the Start" partnership with our customer Peabody, which sees us collaborate with Imagination Books to support childhood reading across numerous deprived London boroughs. Now in its sixth year, the project has delivered more than 11,000 books, and 95% of families have said that they spend more time reading with their children as a result of the programme.
See how our Stand Out! Make a Difference employee volunteering programme and our VINCI UK Foundation ensures that we continue to contribute time, expertise and capital to the communities in which we work. In 2020, for example, our VINCI UK Foundation donated more than £52,000 to various worthy causes nominated by our customers.
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Click on the diagram to find out more 
AWe work with our clients to deliver social value that benefits our clients’ stakeholders as well as our own. Collaboration is conducted in line with our BS 11000 certification in Collaborative Business Relationships, yet with bespoke design to fit the wide variety of clients we have as an FM provider. This process centres on stakeholders that are important to our clients and maximises the positive impact made through our activities.
One such collaboration is “Reading From The Start”, developed in partnership with our client Peabody. Our dialogue with the client identified a need in our common stakeholders and we worked together with Peabody and Imagination Books to deliver a programme to encourage reading for children across the boroughs we were present in. This project, now into its sixth year, has delivered over 11,000 books to children across Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Islington, Thamesmead, and Chingford, with 95% of families saying that they spend more time reading with their children as a result of Reading From The Start.
Across our activities is a network of individuals committed to developing social value within their contracts and regions. Each individual has undertaken training from our Social Sustainability Manager to understand the fundamentals of social value and has a passion to do their best for their stakeholders. This combination of knowledge, passion and action makes them the perfect link within sectors, regions, and contracts to the wider social value strategy, allowing different projects and sectors to learn from each other and maximise national social value delivery by focusing on local communities.
Our Champions can provide projects with sector-specific, regional, and site-specific community knowledge to guide social value activities towards areas that matter most to local people, increasing the reputation of VINCI Facilities and our clients and helping us do the right thing for communities at all times.
Our Social Value Champions have been responsible for directing over £26,000 from our central VINCI Foundation charitable fund into the hands of local communities purely for the COVID-19 crisis, and it was a Champion that won the VINCI Facilities 2019 Communities Award. Matt Hickman, a Social Value Champion in Building Solutions, works closely with Sandwell charities and local stakeholders as well as the council to make sure our focus, through both charitable donations and wider social value activities, is always on delivering meaningful improvements to the communities we work in.
To be able to effectively address the needs of the communities we work in we must engage with and listen to them. At the core of our stakeholder engagement processes are the principles of Social Return On Investment, which hinge on listening to stakeholder groups without bias or expectation. We combine national datasets such as the Index of Multiple Deprivation with the insights of local stakeholders we gain through these methods.
Clients can be sure, through these methods, that their communities and potential clients are being heard, and their needs addressed where feasible, which comes with reputational benefit.
We’re proud to have developed a best practice framework that enables us to accurately assess the social, environmental and economic value of our works. We are members of and collaborate with Social Value UK (SVUK), and attend a range of government and non-governmental working groups to ensure our methodology is robust and transparent.
Additionally, our Social Sustainability Manager is an accredited social value and Social Return on Investment (SROI) practitioner.
Our bespoke framework is developed in partnership with and reviewed annually by SVUK, and we ensure proxies are up to date using a range of research and publicly available information, including TOMS (Themes, Outcomes, Measures) framework and HACT (Housing Associations’ Charitable Trust).
It is important that our claims of social value creation can be attributed to specific activities or interventions, and we use a range of deflators to ensure proportionality.
Our framework is used on all projects over £500k per annum. It measures embedded, additional and inherent social value, and enables deep dive analysis into specific projects. Our approach to social value won an Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management (IWFM) award and has been recognised as best practice by Social Value UK.
We recognise the importance of social, environmental, and economic wellbeing across our communities, but value needs to be generated through projects and programmes that will benefit society and improve people’s lives the most, rather than those that are easiest to deliver or promote.
At VINCI Facilities, we engage with a range of stakeholder groups early in our bid development to ensure activities are planned according to the needs of the projects and affected local groups.
We utilise a range of tools and techniques to forecast, plan, and evaluate social value, and can utilise the Egan Wheel for our outputs or a standard Social Return on Investment (SROI) calculation generated per pound spent on delivery, dependent on your organisation’s primary drivers.
In addition to our own framework, we utilise a third party accredited tool to systemise the process of measuring social value, thereby validating our in-house tool outputs.
We understand that we do not complete our work in isolation, and that big business has a role to play to ‘level up’ society and be responsible to maximise the positive outcomes throughout activities.
Over recent years we have introduced ISO 20400 (2017) Sustainable Procurement into our procedures for selecting supply chain partners. This provides smaller, local, and third sector organisations with an opportunity to be a part of our supply chain and collaborate to deliver positive outcomes whilst delivering core services and/or products.
Our specialist team members can help identify the best outcomes from your projects based on your priorities to enable you to deliver your goals, such as lowering carbon emissions, increasing representation of women or BAME individuals in business or increasing biodiversity.
We have established a range of social enterprise partners including waste management services, signage, cleaning solutions, and corporate merchandise.
At VINCI Facilities, we select charitable partners based on how our expertise can help and support the goals and aspirations of that charity, our vision, and wider stakeholders needs. This strategy ensures that efforts are focused and specific, and that any issues important to our stakeholders are addressed from a variety of perspectives, increasing the positive impact we can make. Whilst oneoff fundraising activities continue, our partnerships ensure we develop enduring long-term relationships that will make a real difference to all parties and will have a meaningful legacy long after our involvement subsides.
In collaboration with a key client, we have been a supporter of the Imagination Library for over six years and have offered pro bono support for other charities linked to our areas of expertise, including asset management and youth education.
The most meaningful social value is created when close attention is paid to local stakeholders’ opinions and needs, and time is devoted to creating and executing a plan specific to the project and stakeholders at hand. These bespoke projects are built around our strong stakeholder engagement and can take almost any form. For clients, these projects are an opportunity for meaningful improvements in the experiences of their stakeholders.
One such bespoke project is “Reading From The Start”, developed in partnership with our client Peabody. This project, now into its sixth year, has delivered over 11,000 books to children across Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Islington, Thamesmead, and Chingford, with 95% of families saying that they spend more time reading with their children as a result of the programme.
Each of our sectors holds a wealth of specific knowledge and expertise. High level plans leverage this by identifying where our sector-specific expertise can support stakeholder need and outlines methods for engaging our stakeholders to achieve this. Through high level plans geared towards each sector, we facilitate meaningful dialogues between the client, supply chain and community stakeholders within the context of this expertise. This allows each project to match its capabilities with specific stakeholder needs, thereby maximising the delivered social value and impact of every stakeholder group.
Every contract will be covered by either a sector-specific plan or a bespoke social value plan, covering both our public and private sector activities, and going well beyond the requirements of the Social Value Act (2012).
The communities in which we work are important in our activities. Through our Stand Out! Make A Difference (SOMAD) employee volunteering programme and the VINCI UK Foundation, we provide support to these communities in the form of time, expertise and capital. In collaboration with these established systems, clients can expand their community support by nominating charities and causes for the SOMAD and VINCI UK Foundation to work with, thereby aligning the outputs of both our efforts to improve the communities in which we operate.
Support comes in many forms. For example, our Sandwell-based building solutions team helped our client Canal & Rivers Trust to clear local waterways. In 2020, VINCI Facilities delivered £52,000 to community projects through the VINCI UK Foundation.
Understanding the true Social Return on Investment (SROI) delivered by a project, product, or business can help our clients measure their impact and make a positive difference with all stakeholders. Importantly, SROI analysis can identify impacts, both positive and negative, that were not expected. Using this information, projects can manage impacts they may otherwise not have known about, mitigating potential risk and highlighting opportunities for increased social value delivery.
Using internal expertise and collaborating with external knowledge centres, including Social Value UK and the Global Value Engine, VINCI Facilities can conduct robust SROI analysis. Our Social Sustainability Manager is trained in SROI techniques and practices to manage all social value measurement.
