The Willmott Dixon Foundation was established in 2011 to guide, monitor and collate the social and community investment activities of the Willmott Dixon group of companies.

Every community is different, so we work with our customers and other stakeholders to identify local needs and priorities and then develop activities which will have the most benefit.

In the ten years since we established the Willmott Dixon Foundation, we have impacted the lives of many people – in 2020 alone, we connected with over 49,000 individuals through our social value work.

Despite the challenges Covid-19 had on our ability to reach our communities, we adapted to continue making a difference.

2020 also saw us launch our 2030 Now or Never strategy. A third of this strategy is made up with our Building Lives theme, centred around supporting the people and businesses in our communities to thrive.

We will deliver this by focussing on three key areas: community, business and people.

1. Understanding community: Ensuring that we always deliver high-impact social value which we can demonstrate meets the real needs of our communities is essential. We know that our communities include our people, customers and supply chain as well as wider community organisations and groups, so we listen carefully to understand where we can have the most impact. In 2020 we developed and launched our national Building Lives Delivery Suite. This suite of programmes enables us to deliver our social value programmes in a socially-distanced, digital, or face-to-face format – we always collect feedback on their success and they are reviewed every time they are delivered to ensure we are having the right impact.

2. Harnessing business leverage: Increasing our social impact by making sure that all our business processes have social value and community wellbeing at their heart – from innovating on our projects to supporting and spending with local businesses and social enterprises and repurposing IT equipment to tackle digital poverty.

3. Supporting people directly: At Willmott Dixon, we have always maintained that the best way to improve a person’s life chances is by enabling them to access good quality work. This starts with our people and extends to those in our supply chain and beyond. This belief is what led us to sign up to the Real Living Wage, set our 2030 gender parity target and regularly test how we are doing in the Best Companies review. It is also what led us to create our new Careers Target.