Delivering social value and supporting social value initiatives is a crucial part of our business and client approach.
We add social value to client projects in our role as engineers
Smart Engineering Minimises Local Disruption
Construction sites are busy both day and night with commercial and residential areas surrounding them, each with its own community. Protected characteristics of these communities include shift workers, those with caring responsibilities and those with disabilities. These diverse communities are significantly impacted by construction noise and the general disruption around the site. Those who need to sleep during the day will be more affected by construction noise and those with ambulatory limitations will be affected by HGVs and road or footpath closures. By focusing on engineering solutions which are simple, repetitive and easy to build (whilst delivering on the architect’s vision), we can significantly reduce construction duration and therefore the impacts of redevelopment upon the communities surrounding the development site.
Engineering Adaptable Spaces
Engineering has a key role to play in making any development project suitable for a diverse community through considerations around adaptability. Without adding unnecessary expense, Walsh proposes to work with the wider development team to identify the potential uses of various spaces and designing the structure to meet these.
With so much experience in the built environment, we are familiar with the legislation for adaptability such as Part M of Building regulations.
We create social value as a business
We are actively developing our social value strategy and community outreach activities. Below are just a few examples of our social value initiatives:Employment Opportunities
We have a record number of Apprentices studying a wide range of apprenticeships at different levels as we continue to build a highly skilled workforce. Priority is given to candidates from some of the most deprived local communities in the London Borough of Southwark. We also prioritise offering apprenticeships to candidates located near our client’s developments.
Schools Outreach
We recently worked with Chalegrove Properties to give a presentation at Cubitt Town School, a primary school local to our One Thames Quay Tower development. Alongside our development partners, we have been inspiring children from deprived backgrounds about the employment and future opportunities that are available to them in the construction industry.
Charitable Fundraising
One of our Directors, Garreth Joyce took part in this year’s London Marathon. He dedicated his efforts to raise funds for Rainbow Trust, a charity providing invaluable support to families with seriously ill children. We supported Garreth not only by sponsoring him but through fundraising efforts including an in-house cake baking competition that saw nine eager competitors enter homemade and creatively designed sponge cakes which were judged on taste, originality, appearance and creativity by Garreth and his trusted advisers. Garreth originally wanted to raise £500 and ended up raising over £2,000 for this incredible charity.
Women of Walsh
Though engineering can be male-dominated, Walsh has a higher-than-average proportion of female colleagues and an important way we have been able to support them (including those who identify as female) has been through the creation of an informal peer-to-peer support network – the Women of Walsh. We can support each other via a private Teams group. This platform provides chat functions and a bank of female relevant colleague information (including the provision of sanitary products). We hold events such as a lunch celebrating International Women’s Day, allowing female colleagues to enjoy each other’s company.
