Explaining the Common Social Impact Framework December 2018

Liz Holford, our resident social value expert and Project Manager for the CSIF development, spoke in an IEMA webinar on 28^th November 2018, joined by others from the Framework development team:

• Lucie Anderton – Senior Sustainable Development Specialist, RSSB
• Peter Ives – Environmental Sustainability Manager, Skanska
• Sarah Borien – Sustainability Strategy Manager, National Rail

The CSIF provides a common, consistent basis for understanding and measuring social impacts by:

• Identifying the 10 key social impacts of rail
• Providing a library of goals, indicators, metrics and monetised values for each impact (some of which require a licence prior to use), from which stakeholders can select measures to best report both positive (e.g. training of apprentices) and negative (e.g. increased noise and air pollution) impacts of activities
• Outlining approaches that can be used for qualitative reporting

The Framework draws from existing social impact research, literature, tools and approaches and is tailored to the bespoke needs of the rail sector. It’s applicable across the whole life of franchises, projects and programmes, but it’s not intended that any stakeholder should use all the measures and qualitative approaches.