As part of Morgan Sindall Group, the first construction company to become a Social Value UK partner, Morgan Sindall Construction has a long-standing commitment to ensuring we are injecting social value into the communities where we work.
By Sean Bowles, managing director for Central & West at Morgan Sindall Construction
For us, social value within our schemes means creating a lasting and sustainable legacy for the communities that sit at the heart of our projects.
Across the 14 projects we have delivered in the past year, we have created over £107 million in social value; a figure which equates to over 94% of the combined value of the projects we have delivered.
This includes 3,949 hours our project teams have volunteered to help worthy causes in local communities, 882 hours spent engaging 7,192 students from local schools, and £59,359 in donations to the projects and organisations that help support and improve the lives of local people.
Social value can come in many forms and includes a huge range of initiatives from providing employment and education to supporting local supply chains. It’s also about reaching out to engage and help vulnerable members of society, and introducing technical innovations to create new, better ways of working such as introducing more sustainable, eco-friendly processes.
Our teams are particularly passionate about introducing initiatives that will encourage and equip the next generation of construction professionals with the skills they need to enter this hugely rewarding sector. We recognise that boosting diversity within our teams is essential for the sector to continue to grow and thrive and we have a number of exciting apprenticeship and work experience programmes happening across the UK and our projects in the South.
Given the UK’s current shortfall of over 170,000 STEM employees, it is crucial to the future of our industry for us to not only provide opportunities for current workers, but also to ignite a passion for these subjects in the next generation of built environment professionals. In Kent, during the £8.06 million transformation of Ramsgate Fire Station, delivered for Kent Fire and Rescue Service, the project team was able to provide 287 school pupils from the local community with over 265 hours of build sector education through a series of classes and workshops.
Beyond traditional education, Morgan Sindall Construction has also offered a number of apprenticeships to key groups in the South West. Ex-military personnel have hugely valuable skills that can be effectively transferred to the construction industry, and we have seen this across a number of our projects where we have partnered with military charities and organisations across the region, connecting service leavers with work placements, training and job opportunities.
In particular our partnerships with BuildForce UK, a collaborative industry-led programme of which Morgan Sindall Construction is one of the founding members, and the Royal Marines Charity, which helps provide people in resettlement with meaningful second careers, have enabled us to provide some of the 14,000 men and women leaving the military in South West with employment opportunities as well as helping further reduce skills gap across the region.
Morgan Sindall Construction is also keen to provide sustainability and boost the local economy within our project communities. Across the South, 95% of our entire project spend has been put toward sourcing materials and labour from local SMEs. Our team at St James’ Church of England Primary School in Okehampton, Devon created £4.65 million in social value, 98% of the total project value, aided by the entire project spend being spent with regional SMEs.
Whilst the economic strength that comes with sourcing local materials and labour is an important part of a project’s social value, it is important we don’t forget the environmental benefits. Sustainability is crucial within local communities as it ensures longevity and stops the depletion of natural resources and landscape. Across our project teams in the South West, we have invested over 5,000 hours of environmental training, so we are able to maximise sustainability that will be valuable to project communities both short and long term.
This training has resulted in Gold and Platinum ratings for our air quality management and water reduction, and between 91% and 100% of project waste being diverted from landfill across all of our projects.
Working with organisations and charities such as BuildForce UK, Kent Family Food Bank and Saints Foundation to provide hands-on time from our project teams continues to be a priority throughout our schemes. At our Solent University Sports Complex project in Southampton, our team dedicated a total of 1,845 social input hours to support wider community projects, with 46 hours benefitting Southampton residents who were not in education, training or employment.
Above all, Morgan Sindall Construction is committed to providing value not only in terms of the physical legacy we leave behind, through the construction of new school buildings, leisure centres, and regeneration projects which act as catalysts to improve people’s futures but through our ongoing commitment to ensuring we are always innovating and exploring steps we can take to create a beneficial impact that will be felt long before and after each and every project build is over.
- For more information about this news release please contact Ruth Cobban at Influential on 07814 556 567 or email cobban@thisisinfluential.com
