In construction, we often think of return on a project in simple monetary terms. We add up the costs of building something and look at the value of what we’ve built to assess our return on investment.
The concept of “social value” is fast gaining traction in the UK. The basic idea is that projects can deliver benefits beyond just the value of the thing we’re making – obvious examples are employing local people, providing apprenticeships, training opportunities and making donations to local causes.
To assess the Social Return on Investment (SROI), these outcomes are assigned a value – for example hiring a long-term unemployed person for a year is assigned a value of £31,461.00. The sum of those values is used to assess the impact of the project. The value is not necessarily representative of the economic benefit, but is more a yardstick to measure with.
So what about CO2? Under the theme of “Environment: Decarbonising and Safeguarding our World”, NT31 gives a social value of £244.62 for every tonne of CO2 reduction achieved through decarbonisation.
So now let’s look at this as it relates to the Peak Power 200 flywheel from Dumarey Flybrid . At the Olympia redevelopment project, Laing O’Rourke deployed flywheel systems from Select Plant Hire on 8 cranes, saving over £230,000 net in fuel and rental. They also prevented the emissions of 347 tonnes of CO2 with a social value of around £85,000.
Just another reason that major projects are increasingly seeking greener solutions!
You can find a decent summary of Themes, Outcomes and Measures here.
https://lnkd.in/ePTH2ZF8