A week's work experience with Temple

Olivia Dawson - Work Experience Student

I have recently spent a week with Temple completing my work experience in order to gain knowledge on the work involved in an environmental and planning consultancy. This took place during my summer holiday, once I had finished my GCSEs. I thought that it would be beneficial to gain some work experience to assist me in my future studies and career choice. I wanted to do work experience at Temple as I have a particular interest in sustainability and the environment. After researching different environmental consultancies, I found Temple’s key projects, such as their team’s involvement in HS2, very interesting so decided to get in contact.

What my work experience involved:

I have not done any work experience before so I had very little knowledge of working in an office; therefore I was unsure what my work experience would involve. I had a very busy schedule which consisted of many different tasks that kept me occupied during the week.

Day One:

On my first day, Monday 30^th June, I met Jonathan Say, who was to be my Line Manager for the week. He gave me a short briefing session and immediately set me some reading work on the services Temple provides. Later in the day, I had a session with Greg Yiangou on his involvement with the Energy Digest newsletter. My first task at Temple was to find related articles that could be used in the upcoming Energy Digest newsletter, which seeks to inform staff on developments in the energy sector.

Day Two:

The next day, I had my first experience of sitting in and observing a team meeting. I enjoyed learning about how the team worked, which was a very different experience to the previous day, when I spent the majority of my time doing independent research. After this, I had a session with Charlene Baker who was able to give me lots of information on the procedures involved in environmental assessment for major infrastructure projects and also gave me a variety of booklets to extend my knowledge. Charlene also set me a task, which was to do research on Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP). Later in the day, I had two more sessions, one with Toby Wastling, who gave me a briefing on his work as bid manager for Temple, and one with Rob Slatcher, who did a session on EIA knowledge. These sessions filled up the afternoon and gave me a greater insight to the different aspects of Temple.

Day Three:

On my third day, I had even more sessions with different departments in Temple. I began the day by completing a task set by Amy Cook, I then enjoyed finding out about all the aspects involved in planning new infrastructure projects. Once this task was finished, Sam Dawson gave me a session on her role in the company. I found out about her role as Environmental Management Systems (EMS) coordinator. One part of the day, which was of particular interest to me, was the Brownbag Lunch session that I was able to sit in on. This was run by Jenny Stafford and Stephen Glenny and was on Temple’s Environment, Society and Business Knowledge Hub, which seeks to grow company knowledge it these areas. The talk was an opportunity for me to see how the company worked together.

Day Four:

My morning began with a site visit with Mark Furlonger, who is in the planning team. We went to a site to view a potential development for rejuvenating the area, which currently suffers from anti-social behaviour. The rejuvenation process would involve building a new school, building affordable housing and redesigning open spaces. This site visit allowed me to experience how Temple operated outside of the office, so was very interesting. After my morning with the planning team, Gill Cotter gave me a session on her involvement with different developments as part of the air quality team. We visited the Shard and Guy’s hospital, as the air quality team recently did a lot of work measuring the air quality at these particular sites. This was another exciting outing which I found very useful.

Day Five:

My final day started with a session with the GIS team. I had a vague idea of what GIS was from previous studies but was not entirely sure how it was used. I was shown the basic skills needed to operate the GIS software, which was both extremely useful and complicated. After this, I had a session with Genevieve Oller on marketing. This showed me a different side to Temple, such as the type of events that occur and how the company is advertised on social media websites. My last session of the week was with Giulia Civello who did a session on an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) project. We went through the cumulative impacts and everything that has to be considered when doing an EIA, which is particularly important for this development due to its position on the green belt. Rachel Lambert from the planning team gave me my final task of the week, which was to do a Planning Application Review.

What I learned:

In my opinion, my work experience at Temple has taught me a lot about how to behave in an office environment. I have realised the importance of time management, particularly with being efficient when completing tasks and punctuality. I have very much valued my time at Temple and feel as though I have greatly benefited from this experience. 

GIS and data mash-ups

Xiyu Phoon - Consultant

It has been estimated that around 90 per cent of data today was churned out in the last two years. With the explosion in social media and provision of open government data, perhaps it comes as no surprise that the era of ’Big Data’ has arrived.

Every morsel of data, no matter how insignificant it may be perceived to be, has a story to tell. With almost unfettered access an immense library of data at our fingertips, we can analyse and visualise data in all sorts of ways and find some compelling stories.

As an example, we might be interested to see whether there is a relationship between fast food and crime. We can download data on the number of fast food outlets per local authority from Public Health England and crime deprivation from the Open Data Communities website. The number of fast-food outlets is given as a rate per 100,000 of the population, whereas crime deprivation includes burglaries, thefts, criminal damage and violence and is ranked from most to least deprived based on population-weighted average ranks of lower super output areas within local authorities.

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When we plot the values together, we see a negative trend, suggesting that the most crime-prone areas have the most fast food outlets. However, we cannot discern from these datasets alone whether this is because fast food promotes criminal behaviour or that fast food outlets tend to pop up in the most deprived areas, which happen to have higher crime rates. As with all forms of data analysis, there will undoubtedly be some caveats, such as how data sets were collected in the first place and whether they are comparable.

Given that most data has an inherent spatial component, we can take such basic data analysis further and plot a map, which can be quite useful to see the distribution of fast food outlets.

Click to view larger.

As we can see, there is plenty of data available from a number of different sources which can be combined in order to discover all sorts of interesting titbits of information which can be presented in a variety of ways.

Our day-to-day projects at Temple focus primarily on environmental data, but we are increasingly making use of open data to enhance our analyses and help our clients with more in-depth decision-making.

Temple's 'Masterplanning for a Sustainable London' event, 26 June

Rachel Lambert - Consultant

How can London, a city formed by successive waves of development – both scattered evolution and chaotic transformations – and which does not fit any discernible pattern, benefit from masterplanning? This was the question put forward by Temple, along with Wei Yang + Partners, at an information sharing event on future-proofing of London held at Royal Holloway University. This interactive event looked at the role of local authorities in achieving spatial resilience to cope with climate change and London’s exploding population.

Climate change resilience was emphasised as a key driving principle to strategic masterplanning. Despite its acknowledged prominence, there is much uncertainty around policy and decision-making on environmental change at a global level and as a consequence, local governments face difficult trade-offs with other priorities. Climatic challenges are not constrained by administrative boundaries – this fact reinforces the need for collaborative working across political and spatial scales, a relationship dynamic that often hinders movement towards sustainability on a regional scale.

A further difficulty is the continued ambiguity of ‘sustainability’ as a concept and its implied significance for all built environment professionals. Nevertheless, it was apparent from our event that one of the three well known pillars of sustainability seemed universally important: people. From a developer’s perspective, EIA and climate change requirements are ultimately thought of as risks that have to be managed. Community on the other hand has the power to influence the success of an entire scheme.

Community

 

Duncan Bower of Westfields discussing the community that make ups the shopping centre's surrounding area

It was generally agreed at the event that community engagement can have the power to significantly influence the outcome of a development, through mutual alliance between the developer and community or communities. To encourage effective communication, local authorities can use community profiling as a tool to counteract the lack of trust that is often apparent among local residents and businesses. Local authorities must not forget the hard to reach groups when engaging, as social isolation is still a common issue. These groups do not necessarily have a voice in the community and do not generally get involved in neighbourhood planning and consultation.

Initial discussions defined community as an organic collection of people who have been geographically defined, though there is much fluidity as people are part of multiple communities: business, virtual, social or mobile etc. Additionally, communities can also be artificially created, particularly in cities, due to key worker status - locating similar professions and people into a certain area. Community needs vary but generally are thought to include an element of the following: jobs and local opportunities for all ages; social care for the elderly; neighbourly support; recycling facilities; local food supplies; community facilitators/ entrepreneurs that could help to bring about community change through the development of enabling platforms; and affordable housing.

Planning has played an active role in enabling greater community involvement, dispersing more power towards neighbourhood planning. With the introduction of the Localism Act (2011), certain areas in London are seeing a growth in the applications for Neighbourhood Plans. Event attendees agreed that community participation has noticeably increased.

Movement

Temple's Jenny Stafford presenting the notes from the 'movement' session at the event

Discussions around movement recognised London as a unique and inspiring case study for the development and incorporation of sustainable transport methods. The city has a plethora of policy and guidance, with the GLA covering the spatial elements and TfL considering the aspect of movement. On reflection this raises the question as to whether additional guidance is required outside of London.

It was suggested that certain transport characteristics in London are generational – where older generations saw the car as freedom, many young Londoners opt for public transport as this represents freedom from having to maintain a costly vehicle. Although this may contribute, planning has certainly played a significant role in restricting car parking provisions in new developments. Improvements are certainly evident: the introduction of the congestion zone has significantly reduced traffic in central London and the increasing trend of cycling is apparent throughout the city. There is still a lot to be done, however, to improve accessibility and ensure transport modes are effectively connected and integrated for the user.

Ultimately, the design of urban spaces and places should couple a focus on local community need with collaborative working across administrative boundaries to respond to wider climate change and movement challenges.

If mayors ruled the world, climate change policy could work

Alaric Lester - Principal Consultant

 

I recently attended a lecture by Dr Benjamin Barber, ‘If Mayor’s Ruled the World’, at the C40 Cities London office. Dr Barber’s central hypothesis is that democracy is in trouble. Our democratic systems are increasingly irrelevant to decisions around such cross-border problems as global pandemics, markets, immigration and terrorism. The 400-year-old political system of nation states is increasingly dysfunctional in the face of global challenges. We watch those who wield power do so more or less without us.

Cities, on the other hand, are the cradle of democracy: political institutions in which civilisation and culture were born. Cities are enduring institutions; nation states are abstractions. More than half the world’s population live in cities (78 per cent in the developed world).  Mayors are already engaged in global governance, in networks of cities working to deal with cross-border issues.

How is this relevant to climate change? Mayors rather than nation states are driving the change, through organisations such as C40 Cities and the ICLEI. At COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, 184 nations came together to, in Dr Barber’s words, ‘…explain to one another why their sovereignty did not permit them to deal with climate change’. The Copenhagen mayor also invited 200 mayors to attend. They found ways to work together. They need to: 80 per cent of carbon emissions come from cities. Nation-state-led organisations such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are tackling climate change at a glacial pace, burdened by the conflicting priorities of their member states putting continued competitive economic advantage first.

We still live politically in a world of borders and boundaries, where states act together in a limited way. The reality that we experience day to day is a world without borders (diseases and doctors without borders; terrorism and war without borders; technology without borders). We need to find a way to globalise democracy or democratise globalisation or we will increasingly risk the failure to address transnational problems and even risk losing democracy itself in the old nation-state box.

I reflected on Dr Barber’s thoughts in light of the seizing of political ground by eurosceptic and far-right parties across Europe in May’s elections. Decentralisation and the green agenda received scant attention. This result was about frustration at the unwieldy nature of the European political system, as well as the worrying undercurrent of nationalism. As environmental practitioners, we are usually neutral on the political stage. We undertake studies, make assessments and provide recommendations. Those of us involved in policy work have some scope to influence the direction of change. But we are all citizens, and citizens can effect change, given the right leaders. Is it time for us to push for a political system that will properly support positive environmental change?

Planning Application for second Cheddar Reservior

Mark Furlonger - Technical Director

 

Temple Group has acted as the planning authority through Planning Performance Agreements on a number of occasions, but on 10^th June we finished our biggest project – and delivered a planning application for the second reservoir at Cheddar, on behalf of Sedgemoor District Council.
 

It took almost two years to get here and longer for the applicants to draw up the 160ha scheme, though the actual application was less than 6 months.
 

Having been at the sharp-end on a number of large infrastructure projects, this was different. We saw, in every detail, how other consultants dealt with planning applications by having to deconstruct it, line by line and make sure we could support it at planning committee.
 

But, it is very interesting being on the local authority side and going through the pre-application to committee cycle. Especially when a Council like Sedgemoor has spent months dealing with some of the worst flooding for years and then dealt with water that the area did actually need!
 

Having worked with the applicants at pre-app stage, validated and assessed their application and a (not in-substantial) Environmental Statement, none of the public objected to the application. At the end of the 10-year build period, Cheddar will have a great new recreational resource.
 

And a lot more water to drink….

If sustainable transport initiatives deliver such impressive return on investment – why don’t we put more money into it?

Colin Black - Temple Associate

It is interesting to note just how many official reports by the Department of Transport, peer-reviewed academic papers, and evaluation studies of initiatives there are. They all point to the substantial benefits of investment in sustainable transport projects, particularly those that seek to manage demand – known inter-changeably as TDM (transport demand management), Mobility Management and Smarter Choices.

In 2011, a House of Lords Select Committee reviewed the evidence and concluded that large-scale campaigns are effective in changing behaviour. They recommended that TDM was combined with fiscal interventions and infrastructure improvements. They also said that more use of regulatory and fiscal interventions should be made to support policies to reduce car use and that we should continue investment in sustainable transport infrastructure.

 

Also in 2011, the UK Treasury published guidance to encourage use of TDM to improve the asset life and value of infrastructure. Its guidance emphasised that all infrastructure benefits can be enhanced by TDM in terms of “improved asset utilisation”. It recommended that TDM must be applied from the outset and should include measures to influence behaviour. The treasury emphasised the key role of TDM to improve performance of both existing and future networks.

 

 

 

So why does investment in sustainable transport remain so low? How come the preference (in terms of Lion’s share of budget allocated) tends to be to build our way out of traffic congestion? Unprecedented amounts of cash are currently being pumped into transport infrastructure schemes on the basis that they deliver impressive economic returns on investment, that they are “good for the economy”.

 

Well this is partially because scheme promoters intentionally use the following formula to secure approval and funding: underestimate costs + overestimate benefits = funding! The Highways Agency recently commissioned evaluation of its recent major infrastructure projects and found very little evidence that the out-turn benefits were comparable to those projected when determining viability for funding. The standard economic appraisal system is flawed and favours bigger infrastructure projects. Large infrastructure schemes are therefore commonly presented as more attractive than many small, tried and tested sustainable transport initiatives.

 

 

This year David Metz from UCL published his book “Peak Car”. He argues that if you’re going to use economic analysis to inform investment decisions for any kind of intervention the economic analysis must reflect the real behavioural response to the intervention. He emphasised that the analysis of time savings does not – it is a notional response. For new infrastructure you have to apply a monetised value according to the formula used to calculate the values of time – such as labour market values, stated /revealed preference surveys, etc. All values of time are tenuous - you can’t observe or isolate the specific financial benefits after the event.

 

 

The current approach to scheme appraisal has recently been used to justify a plethora of incremental improvements to the highway network on the basis of a few minutes time savings here, multiply it by a lot of vehicles, and voila: there is your economic justification for another road scheme to help improve national economic performance.  

On the flip-side, despite compelling evidence of the proven economic benefits of sustainable transport, there remains little pressure to act on it as the majority of policy makers, practitioners, and general public still adhere to the ‘predict and provide’ mindset. Not enough people yet understand the role and proven benefits of sustainable transport. This is why still relatively little money is channelled towards sustainable transport.

 

 

Recently an internationally-significant strategic project was commissioned to address this important issue, working with the industry-leading universities specialising in transport and economic appraisal. It addresses the need to communicate the proof that sustainable transport works - by bringing together the compelling international evidence, validating it, making it available and then making sure that the right people in the right places are aware of it.
 

Transport professionals commonly refer to the compelling ‘cost-benefit’ case for measures variously termed as ‘sustainable transport’, ‘mobility management’, ‘smarter choices’ or ‘transport demand management’ measures. Impressive returns on investment in these types of measure are frequently emphasised by those facilitating the development of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans, especially when compared to more traditional infrastructure investment in highways or rail-based systems.
 

However, the lack of access to evidence to substantiate such claims is a fundamental obstacle to developing support for the “sustainable” element of local transport plans. Critics continue to suggest that claims regarding return on investment are myths and not supported by credible evidence. Others assume the law of rationality prevails, and that if there really was a compelling case for investing more heavily in sustainable transport measures then this would have already become reality, supported by appropriate laws, policies, and funding allocation.  
 

There remains uncertainty about whether sustainable transport really delivers. A cynicism seems to prevail about whether so-called benefits are simply hyped up by increasingly well organised environmental campaigners. The fact is that many plans are dressed up as “sustainable plans” but, in reality, continue to operate much as they did previously with the emphasis continuing on major schemes. Even in leading city case studies the total ‘demand management’ investment in the “sustainable transport” plan can be as low as 0.05% of total transport expenditure, which remains dominated by supply-side expansion.
 

One way to facilitate greater buy-in to sustainable transport initiatives and measures is to demonstrate the benefits and return on investment. After all, when major schemes are put forward the over-riding emphasis for doing it is because of the economic benefits. Over the last decade many sustainable project evaluation reports, research studies, and demonstrations have reported impressive results. The difficulty is bringing these together and sifting out those that are credible from those that are more selective in how the results are reported, perhaps with commercial marketing or local politics in mind.
 

The EVIDENCE Project, funded by the European Commission, seeks to collate the best evidence from around the world on the effects of Sustainable Urban Mobility/Travel Demand Management initiatives and measures.  The first stage of the three-year project, which began on 1 April 2014, is to compile an extensive list of literature items which will then be reviewed for their relevance, the significance of the evidence presented, and the quality of the methods used to establish it. Although the remit is broad in terms of type of urban transport measure and whether the evidence relates to a specific measure or initiative or a package, evidence will be particularly welcome on the local economic benefits that arise from investing in Sustainable Urban Mobility.
 

The project consortium will be undertaking a number of structured literature reviews, but is also appealing for references or electronic publications to be submitted via the project website: http://evidence-project.eu.
 

Contributions in any language are welcome, as soon as possible and by October 2014.
 

The EVIDENCE project starts the quest to find the credible evidence that can be used to substantiate the benefits of greater investment in sustainable transport. At this stage in the project we are gathering published evidence from around the world. This database of information will then be reviewed by an independent team of academics specialising in sustainable transport to determine the strength and depth of the evidence base.

 

 

The results will be published on-line and translated into 22 languages.

Dr Colin Black is director responsible for the EVIDENCE project. He has over 20 years experience on sustainable transport research and practical implementation.