Member Article

Social value evidence helps Midlands construction firm land £20m contract

The West Midlands team of a major, national construction company has landed a contract in the region of £20 million, after proving its holistic and measured approach to social value in the bidding process.

With offices across the UK, the Tilbury Douglas Midlands team, located at Trinity Park in Birmingham, will commence work on this significant regional project imminently.

The leading building, infrastructure, engineering and fit-out business delivers vital projects across a range of sectors including health, education, highways, justice, defence, aviation, water and environment.

And, with most major contracts, it has to prove the social value it will deliver when completing procurement tender documents.

As a member of the Civil Engineering Contractors Association (CECA) in the Midlands, Tilbury Douglas was given access to a new social value toolkit which was launched earlier in the year.

The Social Value Framework has been created to help businesses – particularly small and medium sized firms – to work out the positive impact they have on society.

That includes everything from employment and skills opportunities to environmental impacts, and from localising supply chains through to supporting local communities. Charlotte Davies, Social Value Co-ordinator at Tilbury Douglas, said: “We decided to trial the CECA Midlands Framework to compare to our own internal toolkit.

“Being able to fairly and accurately measure the social value the business will bring to a project is hugely important when bidding for contracts because it is now a key factor in the tendering process, especially for public sector work.

“I found the toolkit was easy to use and it helped us to demonstrate an even greater return on investment when it comes to social value than we would have previously accounted for. “There are some aspects around social value, such as local employment and supply chain benefits, that we may have underestimated previously, and the toolkit helped us to identify those and demonstrate that they are part of the social value we would bring.

“Clearly there are lots of factors that contribute to securing new contracts, however, the way we were able to demonstrate social value on this project in particular, certainly, gave us an edge. As a business, we know we bring added value and to be able to showcase that in the best possible way – and win a major piece of work – is hugely important.”

Lorraine Gregory, Regional Director of CECA Midlands, said: “As well as introducing the toolkit for members to use, we also run a series of training programmes on how to use it. “The industry recognises that we bring social value to the work we do and being able to demonstrate that is vital and that was the initial thinking behind creating the toolkit.

“The team at Tilbury Douglas has also shown the huge benefit it can bring to them as a business by using the toolkit as part of its tender for a £20 million contract – which they won!”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Matt Joyce .