Why a Shared Vision Led Approach – and how can this help?

A NIPA Matters conversation (18 September 2024) – summary by Ben Copithorne

“Visions are for prophets” a cynical client once told me – but he was wrong.  Visions can provide the common thread to bring people together, build understanding and, ultimately, to define the outcomes that people want.

Delivering infrastructure is hard and we’re all looking for lessons and insights to help us improve.  That’s why NIPA convened this conversation on the ‘Shared Vision Led Approach’. 

In this article, we pick up perspectives from the speakers, key points and comments – the aim being to help share awareness of the value that the Vision Led Approach offers.

A useful starting point is to acknowledge the ambition – this approach (developed with funding from the Innovation and Capacity Fund Round Two) focuses on both enhancing the DCO process but also, in a bigger context, ensuring the UK builds the infrastructure we need to address economic, environmental and societal challenges.

Reflecting their experience, we heard from speakers from Somerset Council and Basford Powers about their work, holding up a lens through which everyone promoting and working on projects can look and learn:

• Delivering a DCO is no longer an individual and specific technical challenge – it’s far larger than that as we need to build sustainable infrastructure systems for today’s generation and for the generations yet to come.
• Having a shared vision is not an exercise in consensus building – it’s a way of ensuring values are defined, agreed and held from the project outset through to project delivery. The vision is the mechanism and the ‘common thread’.  It’s a ‘cradle to grave’ solution for any project from start to finish.
• With engagement so crucial to any project’s success, working early to have the conversations that inform the vision has value at the project level but also stretches much further to build trust in the entire system. With the scale of our UK infrastructure challenge so significant, we all need and stand to benefit from building that trust.
• The interplay between the needs of the applicant, local authorities and community can be a sticking point – coming together early to understand that, to define ‘non negotiables’ and to find common ground on the outcomes people want is the best formula for success.
• Sometimes you have to deal with multiple NSIPs at the same time – having a Shared Vision is an excellent way to understand the things that matter and what everyone agrees they want to prioritise. Without one, the governance can get far trickier and, by extension, the outcomes far less positive.
• Visioning in planning isn’t new – but applying it in a DCO context and measuring its benefit and impact is what this work (by Somerset Council and colleagues) has been all about. Getting everyone to sign up at the start to a definition and set of agreed target outcomes helped to guide everything we did.  The vision is the filter for decisions and the yardstick for measurement.
• The DCO process is supposed to be inquisitorial not adversarial – that’s when it works at its best. By changing perceptions and perspectives because you start by agreeing the things you do want to achieve, you can change the viewpoint.  You shift from what divides you to what unites you – and that’s tremendously valuable for the tone and the culture as you move forward.
• Having a vision allows you to step back and re-set – it’s easy to get sucked into the day-to-day delivery or into the complexity of challenges and issues on the ground. By fact of offering that big picture, a vision will help you to address the day to day by looking at it as part of the wider framework.
• Successful visions capture purpose, define objectives, and map the end state – by doing that they can motivate, they can articulate the value proposition, and they can help connect with the community in a different way.
• You can’t underestimate the value in the consistency a vision provides – you can go back to it time and again whenever you need to make a decision or fear you might be diverging from the direction you want to do in. It’s like a keel on a boat that keeps the project true.
• At a practical level, the vision can and should flow right through – from early engagement into delivery. Yes, it can and should adapt – and having suitable staging points for that is important – but the main thing is to write it into everything, from your consultation report to your management documentation.
• The vision can be a one sider or a tome, that doesn’t matter – it’s the fact of having it and what it does for the project and the process that counts.

This summary skims over the surface in some ways – but may help to give you a feel for what a Shared Vision Led Approach can do and why you may want to consider it for your next DCO.

NIPA is here to facilitate the conversation and improve the DCO process.  As always, we’re grateful to our presenters and contributors for this NIPA Matters session including: Meyrem Erisken (MHCLG Executive Officer NSIP reform), Jaia Mridula (MHCLG research lead for NSIPs), Andy Coupe (Head of Infrastructure Programmes at Somerset), Tess Bond (Senior Planning Officer at Somerset) and Lynn Basford (Basford Powers).

And thank you on behalf of NIPA to Amanda Pownall for leading on this NIPA Matters update, supported by NIPA council members Victoria Redman (Womble Bond Dickinson) and Philip Emison (Costain) behind the scenes.

Ben Copithorne is Managing Director at Camargue