Beyond Compliance: How to Embed Social Impact in Built Environment Projects

The landscape of Social Impact has evolved from being a ‘nice-to-have’ to a strategic business priority. Today, employees, investors, and regulators are asking the same key question: What positive difference can businesses make to society?

But what exactly is social impact and how can businesses move beyond simply ideation to making real, measurable change?

For businesses in the built environment, the question of social impact carries particular weight. Importantly, the built environment doesn't just serve communities; it concurrently shapes them. The buildings, infrastructure, and places created today will influence how people live, work, and connect - thereby impacting future generations. But what exactly is social impact and how can built environment businesses and key actors such as contractors, architects and property developers, move beyond vague mission statements to creating real, measurable change?

What Is Social Impact?

Social impact refers to the effect an organisation's actions have on people, communities, and society as a whole, encompassing both positive and negative outcomes, whether intended or unintended.

In the built environment, social impact has many touch points. It is presented in the quality and affordability of homes, the safety and wellbeing of construction workers, the training and employment opportunities created for local people, the accessibility of buildings its users, and the regeneration of existing communities. It extends through supply chains, from labour conditions, materials used by manufacturers, to the fair treatment of subcontractors.

While traditional corporate social responsibility (CSR) is often characterised by one-off community donations or charity partnerships, social impact focuses on the longer-term, systemic outcomes embedded in how projects are designed, procured, and delivered.

Why Social Impact Matters for Built Environment

There is a growing business case for social impact in construction. Developers and contractors that demonstrate credible social value outcomes, such as community engagement, local employment, training, and wider socio-economic benefits, can strengthen their planning and procurement cases for bid submissions and evaluations. In the UK context, the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 required local authorities to consider how procurement could improve economic, social, and environmental wellbeing.

The UK's 2023 Procurement Act has transformed social value from a consideration to a requirement. Contracting authorities must now actively maximise public benefit, with measurable social impact KPIs carrying significant weight under the new Most Advantageous Tender (MAT) criteria - which values overall benefit, not just lowest cost.

Beyond reputational implications, the financial community has shifted its lens. ESG performance and social value measurements increasingly shape lending decisions and investor appetite, with social impact metrics featuring prominently in due diligence and reporting frameworks.

How Built Environment Businesses Can Leverage Social Impact Strategically

The most effective businesses embed social impact into project delivery and core operations. Here’s how your business can begin to successfully do this too:

1. Aligning Social Impact with Business Purpose and Project Context

Start with fundamental questions: What social issues are most connected to our projects and locations? How do our developments and operations touch people's lives? What problems are we uniquely positioned to solve?

For a housing developer, this might mean focusing on affordability, creating mixed-tenure communities, or supporting first-time buyers. A main contractor could prioritise worker safety, apprenticeship programmes, and local labour targets. An infrastructure developer might address accessibility or create public spaces that enhance wellbeing.

2. Identifying Stakeholders and Material Social Issues

In the built environment, stakeholder landscapes are complex and often contentious. Key groups typically include direct employees and subcontractors, local residents and community organisations, local authorities and planning departments, as well as the end users and occupiers. As such, meaningful stakeholder engagement helps to identify social issues that matter most to both affected communities.

3. Designing Measurable Social Impact Initiatives

Successful social impact initiatives are ones that have clear objectives tied to project context. For example, improving local employment rates and enhancing community facilities. Crucially, measurement systems should track both outputs (what you did) and outcomes (what changed as a result). As an example, questions can include: did your local labour commitment actually reduce unemployment in the area? Did your community space enhance social connection, or does it remain underutilised?

What remains important in measuring and reviewing social impacts is ensuring the correct data points are accurately measured, tracked and reported on over time. This rigour avoids social washing and enables continuous improvement across your portfolio.

4. Integrating Social Impact Across the Project Lifecycle and Value Chain

The reach of social impact should extend across the whole project lifecycle and throughout the value chain, embedding it into operations and strategy. This can be done effectively through:

• Design and planning: this means considering social value from conception. Designing for accessibility, creating spaces that foster community connection, and ensuring schemes respond to genuine local need rather than maximising units.

• Procurement: this involves selecting supply chain partners based partly on their social credentials and supporting local and SME contractors.

• Construction delivery: integrating social impact here means robust health and safety systems, genuine training and apprenticeships opportunities, as well as considerate construction practices that minimise community disruption.

• Post-completion and operation: this extends to affordable management and maintenance, creating buildings and spaces that remain accessible and inclusive to communities residing in and around it.

5. Communicating Impact Authentically

Communicating social impact in the built environment requires care, clarity, and integrity. This means presenting a balanced account of what has been achieved alongside the challenges encountered. It combines quantitative data with qualitative insight, ensuring that numbers are complemented by real stories that demonstrate meaningful change. This can mean reporting on completed apprenticeships leading to sustained employment, demonstrating improvements in local supply chain resilience, and community facilities that are actively used and valued speak far more powerfully than aspirational statements.

Concluding Reflections

When executed effectively, social impact in the built environment strengthens relationships with planning authorities and public sector clients, and creates shared value for business, communities, and society. Social impact isn't about charity or compliance box-ticking. Instead, it's about how projects are conceived and delivered, who benefits from development, and the legacy left in communities. By embedding social impact into strategy, project delivery, and culture, developers and contractors across the built environment can become powerful drivers of positive change - creating places where people and communities are able to thrive.