Case study / Social Value
Thrive: Social Value Reporting from Spreadsheet to Live Power BI Dashboard
Background
A strong social value commitment. A reporting process that couldn't keep up with it.
Social value is a core obligation for tier 1 contractors — embedded in procurement frameworks, client requirements and the UK Social Value Model, and increasingly linked to the ability to win public-sector work under regulations such as PPN 002. For a leading tier 1 contractor with ambitious social value targets spanning apprenticeships, VCSE spend, employment, community engagement and environmental performance, capturing and managing social value data was not the challenge. Getting that data in front of the right people, in a useful form, consistently and without manual effort, was.
The business had adopted Thrive — an enterprise-grade social value platform that captures, measures and reports social value activities using the Impact Evaluation Standard, converting outcomes into financial proxy values aligned to the UK Social Value Model. Thrive held the data. But translating it into a reporting format accessible to senior leadership and project teams relied on the sustainability team manually compiling Excel trackers and converting them into PowerPoint decks — a process that was time-consuming, difficult to keep current and limited in reach. Acumine was engaged to build the reporting layer that made Thrive's data genuinely accessible across the business.
Manually maintained Excel trackers with no live view
Performance against annual social value targets — apprenticeship numbers, VCSE spend, work placements, community and education engagement — was being tracked in spreadsheets maintained by the sustainability team. With no live connection to Thrive, keeping the trackers current required regular manual updates, and the data was always as current as the last person who updated it.
PowerPoint-dependent reporting with limited reach
The primary output from the sustainability team's tracking work was a PowerPoint report covering social value performance alongside climate measures — direct and indirect emissions, carbon intensity, construction waste and water intensity. Meaningful reporting on social value performance depended on people receiving and reading that deck, which constrained both the frequency of updates and the audience that could access the data.
Data deficiencies in Thrive invisible until too late
Where project teams had not provided the evidence or activity records required in Thrive, there was no systematic way to surface those gaps before the reporting cycle. Data quality issues were only discovered when the sustainability team attempted to compile their trackers — at which point chasing missing records required additional effort and delayed the reporting process.
No separation between leadership and project-level reporting
Senior leadership needed a high-level view of progress against group-level social value targets. Project teams needed visibility of their own performance and evidence requirements. The PowerPoint format served one audience at a time and could not easily provide both views simultaneously — meaning either the leadership summary or the project-level detail was always a separate, additional effort.
What Thrive captures
A structured social value dataset — aligned to UK government frameworks and ready to report against targets.
Thrive captures social value activities across the business and supply chain, converts them into financial proxy values using the Impact Evaluation Standard, and holds them against the targets and commitments that matter for client reporting, procurement compliance and ESG obligations. Acumine connected to the Thrive API, integrated annual target data from SharePoint, and surfaced the combined picture in Power BI.
Social value activities
Apprenticeships, VCSE spend, work placements, community and education engagement
Thrive captured the core social value activity categories required for Construction Sustainability Action Plan reporting — apprenticeship numbers, voluntary, community and social enterprise spend, work placement volumes, community engagement activity and education engagement. Each category was tracked against annual targets, giving the reporting layer the structure to show progress, identify shortfalls and surface areas where activity needed to increase to meet commitments.
Supply chain contributions
Social value activity across the project supply chain — tracked and attributable
Thrive's platform was designed to capture social value contributions from the supply chain as well as the contractor directly — giving the business a more complete picture of the social impact being generated across its project delivery model. This data formed part of the reporting layer, allowing the business to demonstrate the breadth of social value activity attributable to its programmes beyond direct employment and spend.
Annual targets and evidence
Performance against targets — with visibility of where evidence is missing
Annual social value targets were held in SharePoint and integrated into the reporting model alongside Thrive activity data — enabling the reports to show not just what had been achieved but how it tracked against the commitments made. Critically, the platform could also identify where activity had been recorded but supporting evidence was absent, giving the sustainability team a proactive tool for managing data quality rather than discovering gaps at submission time.
The solution
A two-variant Social Sustainability Report — one for leadership, one for project teams, both driven live from Thrive
Acumine built a Power BI Social Sustainability reporting platform connecting to the Thrive API and SharePoint annual targets — delivering two distinct report variants designed for different audiences, both structured around the scorecard approach used across the business's wider reporting suite, and both including housekeeping pages to surface data quality issues proactively.
Senior leadership report
Group-level social value performance against annual targets — always current, no distribution required
The leadership variant provided a high-level scorecard view of social value performance across the five key areas — apprenticeships, VCSE spend, work placements, community engagement and education — showing progress against annual targets in a format consistent with the business's wider sustainability reporting. With the report driven live from Thrive via Power BI, the leadership view was always current without requiring the sustainability team to manually update a spreadsheet or distribute a new deck. Senior leaders could access the current social value position at any time, independently of the reporting cycle.
Project-focused report
Project-level performance and evidence requirements — guiding teams on where action is needed
The project variant gave project team users visibility of their own social value performance — what had been recorded, how it tracked against targets and, critically, where evidence was missing. A dedicated housekeeping section surfaced gaps in the Thrive data at project level, giving project teams a structured view of where they needed to add records, upload evidence or chase supply chain submissions before the next reporting period. This shifted data quality management from a reactive exercise by the sustainability team into an ongoing, proactive responsibility for project teams themselves.
Missing evidence pages
Proactive data quality — surfacing gaps in Thrive before they become reporting problems
Both report variants included housekeeping pages specifically designed to identify where Thrive data was incomplete — activities recorded without supporting evidence, targets without corresponding activity, or project records where required fields were absent. This gave the sustainability team a live view of data quality issues across the Thrive environment, allowing them to address gaps systematically rather than discovering them only when compiling periodic reports.
SharePoint integration
Annual targets from SharePoint combined with live Thrive activity data in a single model
Annual social value targets were held in SharePoint rather than Thrive itself — reflecting how the business managed its commitments separately from the activity capture platform. The reporting model integrated SharePoint target data alongside the live Thrive activity feed, enabling performance-against-target views across all five social value categories without requiring targets to be re-entered into Thrive. This integration became the foundation for a broader Social Value Scorecard for the construction business, with Thrive as the sole data source for activity and SharePoint as the source for the target framework.
Outcomes
Social value performance visible to the right audiences — without the manual effort
Senior leadership access to live social value performance
Social value progress became accessible to senior leadership at any time — without waiting for the sustainability team to update a spreadsheet and distribute a deck. The live Power BI report gave leadership a consistent, always-current view of performance against group targets across all five social value categories, replacing a periodic, manually compiled snapshot with an on-demand dashboard aligned to the business's wider scorecard reporting approach.
Data deficiencies surfaced proactively
The missing evidence pages in both report variants transformed data quality management from a reactive task at report-compilation time into an ongoing, visible responsibility. Gaps in Thrive — missing evidence, incomplete records, absent supply chain submissions — were surfaced continuously rather than discovered under pressure before a deadline, giving both the sustainability team and project teams the time and visibility to address them systematically.
Project teams engaged with their own social value data
The project-focused report variant gave project teams a direct view of their own social value performance for the first time — moving social value reporting from something the sustainability team did centrally to something project teams could monitor and act on themselves. The housekeeping section in particular gave project teams a structured basis for understanding what Thrive data they were responsible for maintaining and where gaps existed.
Foundation for a full Social Value Scorecard
The two-variant Social Sustainability Report established the technical and structural foundation for a broader Social Value Scorecard for the construction business — with the Thrive API integration, SharePoint target data model and Power BI reporting layer all in place. The initial delivery proved out the approach across the five core social value categories and created a reusable platform pattern for extending coverage as the business's social value reporting obligations evolve.
Technology
Thrive and SharePoint data unified in Microsoft Fabric and surfaced in Power BI
The solution connected to the Thrive API via a Microsoft Fabric and Azure data pipeline — pulling social value activity data and structuring it alongside annual target data ingested from SharePoint into a single, governed reporting model. Power BI delivered the two-variant Social Sustainability Report, with the scorecard layout, housekeeping pages and missing evidence views all driven from the same underlying model.
Social value reporting is an increasing obligation for tier 1 contractors — embedded in public-sector procurement frameworks, ESG commitments and client expectations. If your business uses Thrive to capture social value activity but is still relying on spreadsheets and PowerPoint to report it, Acumine can build the Power BI reporting layer that makes your social value data accessible to leadership and project teams without the manual effort.
Work with Acumine
Using Thrive and still reporting social value performance through spreadsheets and PowerPoint?
If your sustainability team is manually compiling social value performance data from Thrive into trackers and presentation decks, Acumine can build the reporting platform that replaces that process — connecting Thrive and your target data into a live Power BI dashboard that gives leadership and project teams the social value visibility they need, always current and without the manual overhead.