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Social value creation

From unemployment to housing affordability, cities and regions are experiencing big social challenges.

Realising that infrastructure projects are among the biggest investments made in communities, project owners are recognising infrastructure’s power to create social value beyond the primary purpose of an asset, and the role that projects can play in improving social, economic, and environmental outcomes. Combining a broad range of capabilities, skills and experience, RPS can help you understand, deliver and measure social value throughout the project lifecycle.

Working in infrastructure? Share your views via a short industry survey

RPS and Infrastructure Sustainability Council (ISC) have partnered on a new project to support the infrastructure sector to understand how social value can be created, measured, and maximised through projects. Released in late 2022, our Unlocking Outcomes That Matter discussion paper started the conversation. Now, we're inviting you to share your views on how infrastructure projects can serve as a mechanism for social value creation, and how stakeholders can collaborate to drive this across project design, assessment, and delivery.

Take the survey

Download the discussion guide

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Taking a social value approach to infrastructure investments

Understanding opportunities for social value creation can help you to build trust with your stakeholders, reduce project risk, and ultimately deliver better infrastructure.

We help our clients to realise the full value of infrastructure investments, policies, and projects by evaluating the social, environmental, and economic context in which they are delivered, and exploring the outcomes that really matter to communities.

Aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) we design solutions and strategies to capture social value, prioritise community wellbeing, and foster resilience.

Our focus

Understanding the outcomes that matter

We support project owners to investigate community aspirations, values, challenges and opportunities. We quantify the cost of social challenges and develop evidence-based strategies for creating social value through infrastructure investments.

Positioning projects to realise social value

We collaborate with project partners to adopt governance frameworks that contribute to social value creation. We facilitate partnerships that generate positive outcomes for employment, education, housing, placemaking, and more.

Demonstrating positive impact

We gather evidence that helps projects measure their impact. We quantify and communicate the social benefits that your projects deliver for individuals, communities and places.

Our services

Social value strategy and transformation

By engaging with stakeholders to understand and analyse the business or project context, we identify barriers to success and opportunities to improve social impact. We work with our clients to develop a theory of change that will inform strategies, policies, and implantation plans to improve social, economic, and environmental outcomes.

Economics

We estimate the monetary value of social benefits so that they are taken into account by decision-makers in cost-benefit analysis. We design benefits realisation frameworks to help infrastructure owners to track performance over time.

Social research

Applying an objective, yet people-centred approach to research, we help clients to investigate and explore community identity, sentiment, and needs. Armed with reliable data about stakeholders, markets, and capabilities, we develop actionable insights to guide business, project, and policy strategy.

Our research model is based on a customised approach to understanding the needs and values of communities. We work with our clients to identify the key research objectives and tailor our methodologies to meet these requirements. We use a range of techniques to explore operational environments, demographic profiles and existing data sets, and understand ‘who’ a community is.

Social procurement and supplier diversity

We give strategic advice on developing your social procurement plans that align with government policy, to create a more inclusive and equitable society.

Engaging with industry and directly with organisations that deliver impact to build local capacity and grow a competitive market, we support clients at a contract level to ensure social clauses are added that allow businesses with a social purpose to contribute.

Stakeholder engagement and facilitation

Whether it’s a multi-billion dollar infrastructure project or a local policy initiative, engaging with the community about your project vision and goals can help build stakeholder buy-in, reduce risk and build social benefit. We create engagement programs that are evidence-based, meaningful, and measurable, assisting clients to connect with their stakeholders, communities, and customers.

Deliberative engagement and co-design

Using deliberative engagement processes we assist organisations to test strategies, consider issues more deeply, and develop plans. Bringing together expertise across all areas of communications, community engagement and research, we help clients to adopt iterative design approaches and put stakeholders, communities and customers at the centre of their strategy.

Data analytics and insights

In the age of ‘big data’, strategic interrogation, management and presentation of business information can unlock significant competitive advantage. Bringing decades of information advisory experience across a range of industries, we empower governments and businesses to enhance their offering through strategic data analytics and insights.

We work to understand your business context and objectives, developing customised data management methodologies that inform smart planning and meaningful engagement with your stakeholders.

Social impact assessment

Applying best practice methodology, we take person-centric approach to better understand and manage the social impacts that development or infrastructure projects have on communities.