Facilitation of events & meetings Archives - Osmos2022

The wood of the Sonian Forest

Julia Rocha — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 20:15:24 +0000

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Facilitation of events & meetings

Cities produce vast amounts of resources, much of which goes under used or overlooked.

Cities produce vast amounts of resources, much of which goes under used or overlooked. Good quality hardwood is a resource that many cities have, found in parks, forests and street-trees. Yet wood in most European cities is treat as waste or a liability. The Sonian Wood Coop explored ways to localise a valuable resource, creating jobs and an appreciation for local wood.

The Sonian forest sits on the edge of the Region of Brussels and is considered one of the largest urban forests for a European city. It produces some 20,000m2 of wood per year which is cut and sold to the highest bidder. While this may seem logical, the wood is largely felled and sent directly to Asia (mostly to China) as uncut logs. No processing or transformation is done locally before it is exported. Conversely, furniture makers and builders located in and around the Sonian forest often purchase wood from Scandinavia, Canada or even Asia as local wood is hard to come by. We saw this absurd contradiction as an opportunity to research and then shift local value chains through entrepreneurship.

Case study

Project: Sonian Wood Coop

Client: Self initiated

Year: 2020

Partners: Centre d’ecologie urbain Bruxelles, The Walden Project

Location: Brussels, Flemish and Wallonian Brabant

Team: Adrian Hill, Hanne Van Reusel, Stephan Kampelmann, Marco Kooistra

Sector: Production, vision, process management

Services: Business model & financing, systemic & service design, governance models, facilitation of events and meetings, user research & engagement

What goes around

Why does wood from Belgium end up being shipped across the world? There are a number of reasons and various speculations. China has little to no local wood and is prepared to pay premium prices for high quality material. Asia, as the world’s factory, often ships containers back that are empty, so transport costs are considered low. Finally, speculation is being made that there is a concerted industrial strategy to break local production chains in Europe so that they can be bought up by multi-nationals.

The sale of wood for export markets was common knowledge to both local institutions and researchers, yet little had been done about it. One reason is that local policy makers could not see how to interrupt a value chain that the market considered was working.

When we looked into how the wood value chain operated, we found that it involved a vast number of steps, through which it may be possible to access the wood. Firstly, the source of wood. Much of the wood was sourced from the three main forest owners: the regions of Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia. The regions auction wood in a complex system amongst a small group of merchants, once per year. Private landholders in the region also owned wood, but the volumes were far smaller.

Purchasing from auction also meant arranging a lumber-jack and other logistics, which considering the small Belgian market was challenging. A second source of wood is from the timber merchants, who have purchased the wood from the landholders. This meant that prices were far higher but risk was lower as it was clearer what was being purchased. A third source would be from the lumber yard, however the limited remaining yards in Belgium meant that prices were not competitive.

After establishing where the wood comes from, it was important to explore where it can go. We considered two main ‘clients’. Firstly carpenters and carpentry companies. Considering that Brussels has a higher income population, companies exist that work with quality hardwood and are prepared to pay for quality and the local branding. Secondly, retail customers were an opportunity for finished items that did not require intensive processing (such as tables). Finally, other markets were considered such as the construction sector and a market for flooring.

Breaking the cycle, establishing the Coop

In this self-funded project, Osmos developed everything required to launch the cooperative and make the resource attractive to the local market. We called the venture the Sonian Wood Coop, with the ambition to source local wood for the local market with the result of reducing carbon emissions, providing jobs and creating value from the local resource.

Establishing the coop involved researching existing production chains, understanding local interest groups, developing businesses partnerships, sourcing start-up capital (such as a successful crowdfunding campaign), defining the branding and website, campaigning the media, exploring processing, marketing and selling the wood. Osmos was involved in all steps of the process.

The Coop has now been in existence since 2020 and has grown to five full-time staff. This can be considered a successful case of re-localising local resources.

The coop now

By 2022, the coop had grown to some 6 employees, shifting hundreds of tonnes of wood back into the local market. The material is used by woodworkers, from amateurs to professionals, across the region and shows a healthy demand for local resources. The coop has diversified its offering to include raw wood, a range of processed products (such as tables and flooring) and customised design. While this remains a positive news story, the growth of the business remains challenging particularly in terms of dealing with cash flow, production volumes, finding a permanent location and dealing with the ebbs and flows of the international wood market. We look forward to rewriting this article in another three years!

The following video from Brussels’ Bruzz news site captures the atmosphere:

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More about the case study

Sonian Wood Coop website

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Institutions as eco-systems

Julia Rocha — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 20:45:06 +0000

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Facilitation of events & meetings

Five school campuses explore ways to reduce their environmental footprint.

Institutional infrastructure consumes vast amounts of resources and in turn produce considerable amounts of waste. In isolation, an individual school, hospital or aged-care facility is often limited in their capacity to reduce their environmental footprint. But by grouping institutions, it can be possible to look for ways to pool resource management and reduce the environmental impact of institutional sites. Five schools campuses in Brussels decided to look for a way to reduce their environmental impact, while also nurturing a grass-roots movement to share resources and knowledge between students and staff.

Brussels’ French language community, the COCOF, is responsible for nine schools, spread out across five campuses and hosting some 7000 elementary, high school and technical training students. The education curricula is extremely diverse, ranging from primary school to professional education such as baking and agriculture.

We were commissioned to research and design a visionary masterplan to outline a more sustainable direction for the COCOF’s campuses that involved teachers, students and ground staff. The concept of ‘ecological transition’ was recently integrated into the COCOF with a small transition team set up to facilitate workshops and events. This masterplan would help the team to take a wholistic view of a transition and allow them to prioritise actions.

Case study

Project: Mission Janus

Client: Commission communautaire française (COCOF)

Year: 2019

Partners: Centre d’Ecologie Urbain de Bruxelles

Location: Brussels

Team: Adrian Hill, Hanne Van Reusel

Sector: Production, vision, public space and community

Services: Systemic & service design, governance models, facilitation of events and meetings, user research & engagement, strategic communication

Learning the ropes

The project was driven by senior staff within the education campuses, including the general director, which helped to put the project high on the agenda. The first step involved extensive research to understand how the campuses operated according to three variables: teaching, maintenance and student culture.

What we found was that each campus site operated as an island, it had a very different education curriculum, approach to maintenance and student body. For example, one campus had no problems with having vending machines on site and didn’t separate waste, while another banned the sale of junk food and had a range of separated waste bins. We found a reluctance from the maintenance staff to go beyond their standard scope of work. We also found tensions existed between the teaching and maintenance staff, which we found came down to poor communication and a lack of shared vision. We also found that many of the teach staff were interested in including environment into their curriculum but didn’t quite know where to start.

Schools as an eco-system

The five campuses were very different in form and function. All shared some key features, such as having a school canteen and having specific waste flows, such as organic waste. Some schools were located in the city centre and had very limited space while other campus sites had abundant space and were located on the periphery of the city. This allowed us to look at ways the schools could share both resources and adapt the education programme. For example, one campus contained a vast food production garden while another had a cooking school. These links were obvious but the bigger questions was about coordinating when there was a supply or demand of one resource or another and what facilities could be integrated into teaching.

From ideas to action

Within a process of nine months, we set up concrete actions, leveraged existing initiatives and proposed a scenario for the ecological and social transition on the middle and long term. There was great ambition, which could have been considered overwhelming. The project resulted in setting concrete goals to help the staff focus and prioritise.

As a closing reflection, the masterplan would have been easily overlooked if it were not for two key variables. The school benefited from having an aligned senior management team, which was overseen by the general director and helped to drive the overall strategic vision. Furthermore, the transition team meant that operational work could be carried out once the masterplan process was completed.

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Revisiting the role of a bridging actor

Julia Rocha — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 20:38:35 +0000

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Facilitation of events & meetings

Complex projects depend on good facilitators.

After a decade working on local economic development, we reflect on a project that helped to launch Osmos. The multi-disciplinary methodology and tools that emerged from this project have survived well and since have been refined and adapted. However, the case studies used in the project have evolved considerably and we reflect on how the transition from idea to action could have been more effectively executed.

The TURaS (Transitioning towards Urban Resilience and Sustainability) project, financing through the European FP7 programme between 2011-2016, to address the increasing challenge to accommodate more than 50% of the world’s population in cities while also addressing climate and environmental issues. The project involved researchers, local authorities and business partners from 16 cities in 11 different European countries. It explored new transition strategies for European cities to build resilience and sustainability and reduce their urban ecological footprints.

In Rotterdam, Stuttgart and London, the focus was on flood mitigation and stormwater management. In Brussels, Rome and Seville, the focus was on sustainable local businesses. In Dublin and Nottingham, the focus was on activating derelict sites to increase urban biodiversity and improve urban community life. We worked on a couple of fascinating issues such as the concept of a Community Interest Company, temporary use and product-systems services. The results of our work was a guide called “Bridges to Local Economies: Strategies for place and community based economies”.

Publication

Project: Transitions for Urban Resilience and Sustainability – TURaS

Funding: European Commission Framework Period 7 (FP7)

Year: 2011-2016

Partners included: University College Dublin, University of East London, Bruxelles Environnement | Leefmilieu Brussel, Cita Metropolitana di Roma, ProMalaga, Bioazul, BIC Lazio, European Business and Innovation Centre, Climate Alliance, Helix Pflanzen

Overall budget: € 8 869 490.70

Location: Europe

Team: Adrian Hill, Stephan Kampelmann

Sector: Ecosystems, public space & community, production

Services: Vision, process management, sharing knowledge, engagement

What is a bridging actor?

The guide presented the role of a bridging actor as a mediator between places, people and local resources. The role could include facilitating, moderating, care-taking, programming, developing visions and a range of other responsibilities. We kept the specific definition open as the context of the project or problem will ultimately define what role does.

This kind of role has generally been poorly defined or in many cases problem owners (be they public authorities, businesses, research agencies and universities or community organisations) struggle to find the right organisation to support them in dealing with complex community- or place-based problems. Often architects, urban planners or engineers are commissioned, yet they are professions that are poorly trained in process management and complexity. Accountancy and business consultancy experts are also often targeted but they often lack design skills to explore solutions unique to the local context. We therefore considered it important for this guide to flesh out skills and capacities that a bridging actor could offer to address complex place-based problems.

The role of the bridging actor is by no means new. However, over the last decade, we’ve seen increasing interest in it. Human-centred design and services design are emerging branches of design that are helping offer skills to both spatial designers and business and finance experts. In 2015, when the guide was written, ‘Design Thinking’ was a trending within business circles and progressive parts of the public sector to empower designers and non-designers with design techniques emerging from sociology and psychology.

In reflection, since the guide was written, we do not see a radical increase in the demand for ‘bridging actors’. However, we do see a large increase in the acceptance of complexity and a shift towards adaptive governance and prototyping. We have also seen an increasing interest in participation, engagement and inclusion in projects of all types. This is positive news, yet the bridging actor still remains a useful figure that is rarely stipulated in contracts or tenders.

Bridging strategies, are they still relevant?

In the guide, we presented four bridging strategies:

Connection between elements and the system
Cooperation between pioneers and the establishment
Alignment of particular and common interests
Collaboration between communities and entrepreneurs

These four examples portrayed what a bridging actor would do in theory. We have found that in practice, projects are far too messy to fit into clean boxes. These four bridging strategies are helpful in showing the diversity of conditions but are less useful in the field.

Is the process methodology still relevant?

The bridging actor is not just a person or team, we considered it to be a service. In 2015 we developed a methodology that we considered suitable to support the bridging process, what we called the ‘transversal planning process’. The process consisted of seven-nine steps, depending on the type of project. This process served us, as a team, to structure and follow projects. But in retrospect, the process was far too challenging to convince clients and many partners to use it as it appeared too complex.

As our repertoire of design tools broadened, the ‘Double Diamond’ became our go-to methodology. This methodology, developed by the UK Design Council in 2004 and common in the realm of industrial and services design, offers both a simple yet profound way to communicate design founded on research and allowing for flexibility and adaptability. The methodology was remarkably similar to our transversal planning process that we developed before we discovering the double diamond. With so many variations of the Double Diamond process, we felt the need to make some adaptations. We settled on six steps which we use either as an internal guide for project management or to help aligning partners.

How have the tools evolved?

The guide included four tools that we developed and are still in use. Most of our projects begin with stakeholder mapping involving the ‘Pentahelix’. We have linked this tool with others such as personas and power-interest maps. The second tool, the ‘Chart of Emotions’ (what was called ‘Back to the Future’ in the guide) is another tool that we use to kick off almost every project and have found this incredibly powerful to learn about people’s interests. The ‘Project-Environment Canvas’ (called in the guide ‘The Vision Dashboard’) is used regularly during the Define phase of a project and helps with reframing the scope. Finally, the ‘Dialectic’ is a tool that is used less often and mostly when dealing with mediation.

How have the case-studies evolved?

The guide presented ten case-studies to illustrate how the bridging role could be applied in practice. Almost a decade later, it is high time to revisit where they have evolved. Of the ten, it is useful to highlight the five physical case studies that were largely facilitated or driven by public authorities.

The Brussels Crown Barracks and Studio C were cases involving significant public and private finance and where momentum has helped to push the projects forward and be realised however the role of the bridging actor had different outcomes. In Crown Barracks (now called USquare), a public development agency took over this role and helped ‘develop’ the project, which by all intents and purposes has been considered successful due to a well attended temporary use activation process. Studio C has had a similar development process, albeit much slower and the role of the bridging actor during the planning stage was given to a private real-estate agency that was poorly equiped in dealing with the community or transition processes.

The Barking Riverside Community Interest Company was launched by development agency, a public private organisation. It remained limited in its community building capacity and independence and therefore the community has struggled to embrace it. Regardless, with pressure from London’s housing market, development is continuing and is resulting in community building activities which has been triggered by development conditions.

Two other projects, the Parco Agricolo Casal del Marmo and the Solfatara di Manziana have had a very different fate. These two projects evolved little since 2015. In both cases, there was political will and interest yet no budget set aside to kick-start the process and little long-term alignment with other public and private agencies, which were waiting for financing to emerge. Likewise, there was interest from the private sector to invest, however the bridging actor in both cases struggled to deal with the bureaucracy in building public-private partnerships. For both projects, the bridging actor lacked political and financial capital to get the ball rolling and likewise was unexperienced in developing large projects.

In conclusions, what are the right conditions for the bridging actor?

These are four takeaways for the role of the bridging actor.

The bridging actor should be buy-in from critical stakeholders and actors. Not every organisation, be it public or private, needs to be signed up but there should be enough momentum and commitment to ensure the project can be developed or problems can be addressed. If there is not enough engagement, the process should be stopped. This should not be considered a failure as it could save a lot of time and resources in the long-term.
The bridging actor should be seen as independent. Even if the bridging actor is engaged (paid) by one of the stakeholders, it is important that the bridging actor has sufficient independence and neutrality to be trusted and not feel uncomfortable about pointing to the elephant in the room.
Avoid jumping to conclusions. The bridging process must reveal a sufficient understanding of the project or problem before looking for solutions. To avoid remaining vague, it is useful to regularly synthesise and summarise input.
Complex projects do not need complicated processes. The bridging actor must retain the role of facilitator and present a clear process and goals. However, the process should also be adapted if it is not serving its purpose. Avoid confusion about the process at all costs!

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