IT pays to listen. When you’re building on a landfill site and local residents are complaining that a previous project caused subsistence to their homes, the best strategy can be to meet those people and take their concerns seriously. This might sound like common sense, but to a large part of the construction industry, corporate responsibility is something for middle managers to discuss in seminar rooms, rather than something as easy as knocking on someone’s door and asking if they would like you to keep the noise down.

RSK ENSR is currently onsite with a housing project as remediation contractor to redevelop a landfill site for Elite Homes at Westhoughton, near Bolton, Lancashire. From the outset, the project was fraught with potential problems as local residents weren’t happy with a previous development next to the site.

Principle consultant Lucy Speirs says the two firms wanted to establish a good relationship with the locals to avoid dealing with ongoing complaints throughout the project. “There had been a previous scheme in the area by a different developer, and there had been some concerns with subsistence on some of the residents’ conservatories,” she explains. “There wasn’t any evidence that it was to do with the piling from that project, but it was enough for residents to raise their concerns about this development.”

To alleviate the residents’ worries, RSK arranged dilapidation surveys for homes near to the development. Speirs says this will give a good benchmark of any structural damage caused by the work. “We have assessed if there was any evidence of subsistence before the work started,” she says. “It enables everybody to prove after the works if it was to do with the project itself.”

Speirs says RSK arranged dilapidation surveys for some other homes beyond the site’s perimeter for residents who also voiced concerns about possible structural damage to their homes.

Subsistence was just one of a list of concerns residents raised about the development while it went through the planning process; noise, traffic and even the heights of the new homes were also high priorities for them.

RSK decided the best strategy for dealing with these concerns was to go directly to the locals and listen to their worries.

“We decided to go round and make sure everybody was happy with the project,” Speirs says. “We put together a ‘plain English’ briefing note. It spelled out what we were going to do to make sure the land remediation was done properly.

“We sent it to the homes next to the site, and we said we would be visiting the following week. We knocked on their doors, and they had the chance to say if there was anything they didn’t understand.”

RSK then fed the information back to Elite. Some residents wanted trees on the boundary of the site to be left standing. Others said traffic queuing outside their home was their main concern, so RSK asked residents what traffic control measures would make them feel better while it carries out the work.

“In the last week of the work, there was going to be a lot of traffic,” says Speirs, “so we arranged for a member of the remediation team to be put on the road to manage it.”

RSK took other measures, such as moving the generator and site cabin as far away from residents as possible.

Speirs says that the plan has resulted in positive feedback for the company. “Several of the residents said they felt happier after the visits, having been given the chance to get answers face to face,” Speirs says. “They also said they appreciated being listened to.”

Keeping local residents on your side while carrying out remediation work might sound an obvious plan of action, and answering questions and giving local people peace of mind should be an integral part of the project. However, it takes time and effort to carry out and the financial benefits of showing corporate responsibility might not be immediately obvious.

Speirs says one benefit for the scheme is that the project manager’s time isn’t eaten up dealing with complaints.

“It is common sense,” says Speirs, “but I think sometimes it’s not done in a proactive way. Rather, it’s done in a reactive way. This way, we’re anticipating any complaints before they have been made.”

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