BAM Construct UK: a social value framework told as one continuous journey

BAM Construct UK builds schools, hospitals and workplaces. Like every major contractor it now has to show what that work gives back to the places around it. Social value is the industry term for that, and it is an idea that resists being drawn. This is the film that explains BAM's approach to it.

The outcome

A two minute film for BAM's own website, setting out the company's entire social value approach as one continuous journey through a single city. Three themes, thirteen partner organisations and the measurement behind the claims, delivered as clean and subtitled Full HD masters.

The challenge

Social value is a procurement idea before it is a human one. It covers apprenticeships, local spending, volunteering, supply chain choices and community programmes, and it gets measured and reported against a formal framework. That is what makes it credible. It is also what makes it hard to watch: three themes and nine sub-pillars is a slide, not a story.

BAM needed it to land with clients and the wider industry, on a web page where nobody has committed more than a few seconds.

Delivering social value is not just a tick box exercise.

A line from BAM's own script, and the one that set the tone for the whole film.

Our approach

One journey, not a list of themes. BAM's brief opened with an idea worth keeping: a BAM branded vehicle with everyone along for the ride, perhaps a train. We built the entire film around it. A tram runs through one unbroken city, its carriages labelled BAM Team, The Community, Supply Chain, Clients and Industry Bodies, so the argument that this only works when everyone comes along never has to be said out loud.

Turn the framework into places. Each of the three themes becomes somewhere the tram stops. Social mobility is a school, a training centre and a workplace standing side by side. Social inclusion is the people moving between them. The foundational economy is local suppliers, independent shops and volunteering. Labels sit above the buildings, so the structure of the framework is readable at a glance without a single chart.

Show the receipts. The partner organisations BAM works with float in as clouds above a community garden, thirteen of them, from the Prince's Trust and Stonewall to CITB, Build UK and CRASH. The Social Value Portal, the framework BAM measures itself against, appears on a billboard as the tram passes. Both turn a claim into something checkable.

Keep people at the centre, literally. Ten characters were individually rigged and given twenty two further background walk cycles, so the crowds behave like crowds rather than wallpaper. The camera then drops out of the wide city view into moments small enough to recognise: a site team building a playground, BAM people running a session with children.

Land the whole thing in one shot. The closing sequence pulls all the way back until every district built over the previous two minutes sits on screen at once, the whole city visible as a single system. BAM's one number lands over the top of it.

What it does for BAM Construct UK

One asset that explains a formal policy framework to clients, partners and BAM's own people without a slide deck in sight. It names the three themes, names the partners, shows the measurement, and ends on the figure that makes the case. It sits on BAM's website doing that job on demand, for anyone who asks what social value actually means in practice.

Credits

• Client: BAM Construct UK, part of Royal BAM Group
• Studio: Alchemy, then trading as Tiny Wizard Studio
• Runtime: 2 minutes 6 seconds, Full HD
• Animation: 11 scenes, 10 rigged characters, 22 background cycles, illustrated from scratch
• Music: Easy Win by Saint Park, licensed through PremiumBeat
• Language: English, with a burned in subtitled master