Kier partners with Thrive to launch new social value calculator

Kier has partnered with Thrive, which is delivering a social value calculator that will capture, track and demonstrate social value across the group’s activities. 

The Thrive platform is aligned to Kier’s Building for a Sustainable World framework, supporting each of its ten sustainability pillars and its links to the United Nations sustainable development goals. The system will enable Kier to track the social value targets of each project, as well as providing a suite of environmental metrics and a range of corporate-wide reporting. This bespoke data capture will allow Kier to provide its clients and other stakeholders with crucial data on a project’s social value impact and success. 

Since 2017, Kier has used its own social value calculator, the Shaping our Communities Calculator. This was created in-house and provided Kier with helpful data that it could provide to its client and supply chain. As demand for sustainability and social value metrics has increased, the group has partnered with Thrive which offers a more mature software platform and the impact evaluation standard (IES), a framework of metrics that covers more than 109 different activities. This will enable Kier to continue to innovate and differentiate itself as a leader in the delivery of social value.

Thrive’s platform will also allow Kier to track its supply chain’s social value to capture the work its subcontractors do to support its projects. As well as this, Kier is working with Thrive to further enhance its measurement methodology to include additional cost-benefit analysis metrics and its work with social mobility organisations such as LM3 to monitor regional spend.

Sheryl Moore, group social sustainability manager at Kier, said: “The delivery of social value across Kier is important to us as a group and due to this we have been recording our social value impact for many years. Through our sustainability framework, Building for a Sustainable World, we have recognised the need for an enhanced social value platform that allows us to report on the requirements for all of our clients and stakeholders. Building on the legacy of our existing calculator, we completed an in-depth appraisal of suppliers and concluded that Thrive was the best fit to capture our social value impact. 

“Thrive is the perfect partner to help us demonstrate our social legacy and drive the social value agenda. It has a unique combination of being user-friendly, having the ability to effortlessly capture data across both our business and throughout our supply chain, as well as providing robust and credible metrics and having the flexibility to support our various customer requirements”. 

Neil Macdonald, chief executive at Thrive, said: "Thrive is delighted that, after a 12-month selection process, Kier has chosen our social value platform to measure its innovative and extensive social value activities. The unique flexibility of our software compliments Kier’s broad requirements - easy data capture from site, configurable client reports and a robust way of showcasing their corporate values and purpose. We are very excited to see the positive influence this partnership will have on the sector.”