Improving social value in university facilities management

With Dr Nicola Hogan and Dr Malvern Tipping, Co-Investigators

We are very delighted to be awarded the Construction Innovation and Quality Scholarship 2024 by the CIOB. Our research is about the “Development of a practical measure framework for assessing social value in procurement of facilities management services across university estates”.

The project will be conducted by our research team with specialisms in sustainability, procurement and facilities management in higher education sector, including Chief Investigator, Dr Terence Lam (Department of Architecture and Built Environment, Northumbria University), and Co-Investigators, Dr Nicola Hogan (Sustainability Team, Estates and Facilities Directorate, King’s College London) and Dr Malvern Tipping (Tipping Estates Ltd).

The tangible outcome of this research will be a practical, user-friendly framework for assessing social value outcomes within the context of FM services in UK universities as a unique public sector. This framework will serve as: a selection tool for comparing the social values proposed by the tenderers at the tendering stage; a KPI tool for monitoring the contractor’s performance at the post-contract stage; and a research baseline tool upon which further research can be conducted. 

This measure framework will be developed by four sequential components as follows:

• Identifying social value outcomes desired by the stakeholders including estate clients, and procurement/sustainability managers
• Identifying practical social value outcomes which are easy to understand and apply, and most importantly economical to deliver under the current university budget crisis
• Selecting the social values which have critical impact on social benefits
• Evaluating and adopting suitable proxy value approach to measure individual and hence total social benefits

This is a construction-related framework for the use of construction and maintenance of facilities building assets. The impact of this practical framework is:

• It suits the stakeholders’ needs and can be easily understood and applied at contractor selection and performance monitoring stages, thus ensuring high output of social benefits, and compliance with the legislation and associated policy governing the adoption of social value and its weighting in public-sector procurement.
• Consequently, the adoption rate will increase. So government policymakers can make use of this framework to drive full implementation of social value through university estates as a public sector, embracing all necessary social benefits from FM construction and maintenance.
• The framework is flexible and can be adapted, upon further research, to meet the organisational needs in the public and private sectors. As the framework covers economic value (e.g. local employment and spending), environmental value (e.g. carbon reductions in construction and maintenance), social value (e.g. wellbeing of individuals) and the like, it will significantly benefit communities and the built environment.
• The framework will also enable further research to be conducted by academia and industry to develop software to enhance the operation of social value measurement.