Defra - National Air Quality Hub
Practitioner knowledge sharing and information resource for local air quality managers
Stakeholders
Client team 8, user stakeholders 50+
Size
c.200 professional days over 18 months
Project Type
Digital discovery and data design project
Year
2019-2021
The work was funded via a Defra Local Air Quality Grant awarded to the Low Emissions Partnership, a collective of Local Authorities with specific expertise and interest in proactively tackling air quality issues - York City Council, Lancaster City Council and Mid Devon District Council. The partnership has air quality practitioner experience in ample supply, but needed project management expertise for the design and delivery of a digital knowledge management platform.
In the face of an ever more complex responsibility profile for Local Air Quality Managers, Defra, Public Health England and the Joint Air Quality Unit (a DfT / Defra partnership) required a national platform for air quality professionals to directly exchange best practice advice and access a comprehensive repository of role guidance and case studies.
We have years of experience in digital platform delivery, content and information management having worked within corporate IT departments and within smaller, more agile digital agencies. We had existing knowledge of a range of technical platforms with the right capability, and also an appreciation of how much price range variation exists in relation to technology choices and professional services.
The Air Quality Hub had to be delivered to a fixed budget which included the platform delivery, but also stakeholder engagement, user research activities, procurement management, grant reporting, and sourcing and developing a significant amount of new case study and practitioner guidance materials. We combined really solid project management and commercial awareness to achieve a low cost platform delivery, with environmental protection knowledge and content development skills to source, and in some cases directly contribute to, the creation of valuable air quality practitioner materials.
Project Retrospective
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Air quality management is an essential function of UK public protection and environmental protection bodies, operating at local government and national level. The effectiveness (or lack thereof) of strategies put in place by local authorities has a meaningful impact on the lived experience of local communities and on their health outcomes - exposure to air pollution exacerbates health conditions such as heart disease and asthma, reduces life expectancy, and reduces biodiversity.
The Hub brings a wealth of best practice advice into one place, and helps air quality management practitioners more easily engage with new subject areas or refamiliarise themselves with topics that they have not encountered frequently or recently. This leads to more effective strategies at the local level, increased speed of uptake of new strategies that are successful, which improves the rate of improvement of air quality.
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The timeframe for delivery of the platform was generous, but the total budget was not flexible, being the subject of a Defra Local Air Quality Grant. The project also had to be administered through City of York Council procurement and finance processes, as well as in compliance with Defra grant reporting requirements, and enough budget needed to be reserved for the development of the minimum amount of new practitioner advice content. Securing a high quality technical platform delivery at a reasonable cost was challenging and we adjusted procurement timeframes to capture a more competitive delivery quote.
A further challenge related to the variation in legislation and official guidance across the devolved administrations of Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, which was a particular challenge of information architecture that we met through clever content structure design.
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The Hub was launched successfully on time, to budget and in compliance with the Defra grant stipulations, and the grant reporting and governance procedures were all completed in full and accepted. The platform was subsequently adopted by Bureau Veritas and operated alongside other local air quality resources they manage for government agencies, and the Hub is still operating today and providing valuable information support to practitioners. Our focus on user research in the early part of the project meant that the outcomes were aligned with the expectations and needs of users, so that the Hub continues to be used today.
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This was Treligan’s first ever project after the agency was founded in early 2019, and also our first meaningful experience of public sector delivery. It was a perfect environment to immerse ourselves in a new environment, being delivered at the nexus of national agency (Defra, PHE, JAQU) and local government (the local councils making up the Low Emissions Partnership, plus the local air quality managers and public health practitioners forming wider stakeholder consultation groups). The experience we gained underpinned our enthusiasm and capability for delivering sustainability projects for public bodies, where the positive impact of our contribution is visible. As a result we’ve gone on to bid for and win lots more projects across a diverse range of subjects from marine environmental protection to bioeconomy development projects.