Turning the tide towards social investment

Scott is a firm believer that major projects have a responsibility to think about their social impact.

When he joined the team three years ago Scotts brief was to be involved with the education programme primarly, focusing on developing science, engineering, technology and maths related skills (STEM) as well as community investment work.

He says: Back in 2011, management were looking at and considering school engagement.

Thames Water and the engineering sector as a whole is facing significant skills gaps and there was a view that it was important that major projects like this ought to be thinking about what our impact is socially and how we are going to take it forward. The Olympics and Crossrail have done a lot of work in this area and the expectation will be the same of the Thames Tideway Tunnel.

 As a responsible project that recognises its impact, we are keen on encouraging young people to have careers in our sector with a view to filling some of those skills gaps that exist.

We have 24 construction sites across London effecting 14 London boroughs. We are planning on being in some places for seven years, so making sure we have a positive impact on community groups, residents and young people that live in and around those areas is critical.

When Scott made the jump from the public sector where he worked for a London local authority, to the private sector he wondered how a CSR role would differ.

I was pleasantly surprised at the level of commitment from Thames Water and the Thames Tideway Tunnel as a project had to doing this stuff, he says. Not because it mitigates risk or shows you to be doing things for PR reasons but because it is the right thing to do and we feel that we need to do it.

There is a need to get people into engineering and certainly as a project that is talking about delivering a cleaner, healthier River Thames for future generations, making sure that our corporate social responsibility programmes back that up in practice so that we are leading by example.

Scott admits that although Thames Tideway Tunnels mission is to improve the environment, ultimately leading to benefits for people using the river from a leisure or working perspective it is people that count.

Its important to recognise that projects like this are all about the people, he says. The reason we make improvements to our infrastructure is to benefit people and that is an important consideration in everything we do. I think recognising the social impact of our work and having a positive impact in that respect is really key.

So how does Scott and the Thames Tideway team decide which social projects they will support?

We have four key criteria really, adds Scott. When it comes to looking at what community investment projects we are going to run.

We look to see that they are pan London, so that they support the boroughs that we effect not just in small pockets of where we are going to be. They focus on health and wellbeing, on supporting young people and the river and environment.

With increasing numbers of social investment projects being set up, Scott paints a rosy picture for the future.

He adds: We are setting up a new company to deliver the Thames Tideway Tunnel and the infrastructure provider will have its own corporate social responsibility policy. This means there is a real opportunity to take CSR in a new direction and reassess what we want to do with CSR when Thames Tideway Tunnel Ltd is up and running.

We wont move too much away from key criteria but it will give us the chance to reinstate the importance of staff being involved with those projects. So, for example, with Thames 21 we had a group of staff go down and be trained on how to test water quality on the river, and our contractors will be linked into that as well.

There will be a requirement to devote time to our community investment programmes and to make sure they are delivering local community investment projects that reflect the priorities of the people in the area and there is ongoing engagement.

One of Scotts other responsibilities is around skills and employment.

He emphasises: Its for a reason that education and skills and employment are linked. Education is one of our four main priorities within our skills and employment strategy.

Because of what is happening there has been a renaissance around infrastructure projects in London there will be jobs in infrastructure in the next ten years because of the major projects coming up.

We are in schools, telling students about the career opportunities in construction and engineering, getting our staff to talk to them about their roles, making them aware of apprenticeships and work experience. It is these young people that could well end up working on a project within five to six years time. This is why our education and employment priorities are linked and education is one of our four main priorities within our skills and employment strategy.

We recognise that if we are going to address the major skills gaps there are within our industry then we have to be out there talking to the young people who are going to fill them.

A large educational project which took place earlier in the year to coincide with National Science and Engineering week did just that.

Scott says: This involved around 350 students across different age groups. We ran ten events that we called STEM on the Thames.

It was all about getting young people out onto site and engaged with different disciplines, thinking about the subjects they are doing and how they relate to the world of work. One example was we had a class of 30 students on a boat looking at the maths behind the logistics of moving spoil down the river while another class were doing environmental impact assessment work, basically doing the work of an environmental scientist for the day.

The figures back up Scotts claims that the company has put education at the forefront as Thames Tideway Tunnel says there will be more than 4,340 direct sustainable jobs created from 2016-2023, with one in fifty being an apprenticeship.

We have spoken to 4,000 students over the last year. We have spent something like 440 hours at about 60 different STEM related events with 40 different schools in 14 London boroughs that works out as more than 90 minutes every calendar day spent in schools.

My time doesnt count as part of that, I am employed to do this job. This is people that work on the project, project managers, environmental scientists, civil engineers or in our HR department its people doing real jobs telling young people themselves what they might do if they want to follow a similar career or helping them with a practical lesson or whatever it might be.

And when you get positive comments its fantastic particularly when teachers say this is one of the few organisations who run these events because they feel it is important and not because there is something in it for them; that is the best endorsement that you can have.

Case study 1
One of Scotts major projects that ticks all of his key criteria boxes, involves a partnership with London Youth Rowing. The charity was set up in 2004 with a simple aim to get young people to take up rowing.

Scott explains: I think historically there has been a view that rowing is elitist, so what I do is work with young people, particularly in deprived areas, to say this is a sport that everyone can get involved in.

We are working with them on a programme called Row4Results which we set up with 12 schools across London each year. Its an indoor rowing programme initially. We give them a taster session, getting them used to the technique and then we run a competition to find an overall school winner complete with trophy.

The project itself reaches around 1,500 pupils each year but Thames Tideway staff also get the opportunity to understand the benefits.

With all of the schools we try and send a member of project staff along to get involved so there is a staff involvement opportunity attached.

This helps staff recognise the importance of the work we are doing out in the community and in which they will ultimately will be working in.
 
Scott has an answer to those people who think such projects are just a vehicle to promote the importance of the Thames Tideway Tunnel.

There is a not a behaviour change element to this, he says. It is about doing what we think is right to do.

Our logos are on T-shirts and its a jointly branded programme but we dont do a lot of talking to pupils telling them who we are and what we are doing other than to say where we are from.

The programmes they run also need to grow and provide longevity for young people.

He adds: The thing to say about the programme itself is that there is constant improvement. This year we are looking to introduce a bigger element of on-water rowing for example.

Critically though its about making sure there are opportunities to continue at the end of the programme. One of the things we do to make sure its sustainable is we also offer teachers or sixth formers from those schools access to a British rowing accredited course so that they can do training on indoor rowing machines themselves.

Case study 2
A second project Scott and his team work on is with the environmental clean up charity Thames 21.

Scott explains: The programme we sponsor with them is called Thames Riverwatch. Its very much about getting community groups, business and young people involved in monitoring the Thames river quality. Thames 21 have developed the methodology for people measuring the quality and developed testing packs for people to take out to the river and conduct tests in their spare time.

This is a three year project. Already we have had 230 people involved in carrying out water quality tests on the river within the first year.

The geographical reach for this project stretches almost the full range of the tidal Thames with people monitoring water quality from Erith upstream to Teddington.

We have started to work with Thames 21, linking them with some of the schools we work with on the education programme. This is working well as there is a lot of interest from schools to be able to access different off site activities particularly from an environmental point of view.

---

This article first appeared in Project magazine. APM members can read all feature articles from Project magazine over recent years by accessing the Project magazine archive.

Non-members can subscribe to the UK's best-read project management magazine for as little as 56.50 per year (12 copies), which includes access to the Project magazine archive. APM members automatically receive the magazine as part of their membership:

UK: 56.50

Europe: 66.50

International: 77

View a sample issue of Project

To order yours now, click "Subscribe" below: