Most organisations benefit from a strategic approach on how they deliver their activity. NICW is not a traditional organisation, comprised of 8 part-time Commissioners, with two members of the Secretariat.

We have developed our strategic approach bearing in mind our own limited resource, as well as our remit that is set by Welsh Government.

We intend to revisit this approach benefitting from feedback from stakeholders, or any significant change in the socio-economic context.

Our activities

Our first task was listing the activities we carry out to categorise them. We used three categories:

• Foundational: Largely internal activity that enables NICW to function effectively and to fulfil its expected outcomes via our Terms of Reference and Remit
• External: Anything that relates to how NICW is viewed, or how NICW views the world
• Project: Actions related to procured or internally sourced pieces of work that support the objective of providing Welsh Government with recommendations or opinions on infrastructure

We note that some of these components blur into different categories, and some are sub-components of others. We are not seeking academic rigour with this approach.

Foundational	External	Project
Administration	Communications strategy	Contract management
Annual reports	Events and participation	Procurement
Budget	Opinion pieces	Project management
Culture	Platforms for advocacy	Recommendations
Data management	Stakeholders	Report writing
Expenses
Governance
Meetings
Ministers
Senedd
Site visits
Transparency
Values

These activities allow us to add value to Welsh society in the following ways:

• Provide evidence for change
• An independent voice
• Challenge business as usual
• Empowering others to participate or take action in infrastructure
• Embedding futures thinking in all our activities
• Convening different stakeholders in the infrastructure sector

Success factors

We have two different approaches to monitoring our impact.

Our formal success factors are derived from our Terms of Reference and Remit, and the Welsh Government’s Programme for Government.

NICW:

• embeds the Nature and the Climate Emergencies in everything it does
• supports the principles of fair work, sustainability and the industries and services of the future
• supports a stronger, greener economy as we make maximum progress towards decarbonisation
• helps to make our cities, towns and villages even better places in which to live and work
• celebrates diversity and the move to eliminate inequality in all of its forms
• works in an open, transparent and collaborative way
• engages widely and builds consensus for its recommendations
• considers issues of a long-term nature
• balances the needs of maintaining and maximising the potential of existing infrastructure, with opportunities arising from new infrastructure
• considers the likely scale of costs associated with its recommendations to ensure there is a realistic prospect of them being accommodated

We have a second set of internally derived success factors that align with our Values and our own expectations as Commissioners.

Although we have tried to produce metrics to measure our success, in some cases the evidence is not numeric. We are comfortable with a narrative-based approach to assessing our performance, and have included examples of success where relevant.

Critical Success Factors	Metric	Signs of success
Challenged and supported others to elevate the poorest in society (socio-economic duty)	Evidence might include:Clear narrative and/or evidence in opinion pieces and/or reportsTargeted study tours or other activity	Emphasising the unfairness of The Crown Estate’s revenue leaving Wales and calling for it to be devolved to Wales. Just transition emphasised in blog post by Jen Baxter about Port Talbot
Empowered others to participate or take action in infrastructure	Evidence of involvement or engagement with a wide cross-section of citizens or representative groups	Meeting with Borth community members about flooding (June 2024). Diverse voices describing Wales in 2100
Listened to others	Stakeholder engagement activity and feedback; responses to individual direct contact; social media interactions	How many letters/emails did we respond to? How many social media interactions did we receive?
Used high quality engagement and involvement with the public on different platforms?	Social and traditional media; in-person activity; attendance at events	Number of opinion pieces. Website statistics
Engaged with green, blue and grey infrastructure sectors?	Specific data on relevant industry or special interest groups	Documented meetings with infrastructure stakeholders
Demonstrated radical thought and deed	Challenging the orthodoxy	Recommendations to challenge orthodoxy?
Informed ourselves	Information on training, formal or informal. To include study tours, meetings etc	3 x study trips in 20241 x training on futures in 2024 etc
Obtained political support for our work	Statements of support or criticism from politicians.	“The current commission comprises experts who demonstrate dedication to their work, and a passion for that work as well.” Llyr Huws Gruffydd. “The commission has….firmly established itself as an authoritative voice in the sector that is respected and whose opinions are actively sought out by stakeholders, and I do believe this is a sign of maturity for the organisation and we are seeing a real difference from its work.” Julie James
Strong reputation	Statements from people who have participated outside the political arena.
Impact, and measuring impact	Our impact table

Listing our success factors will help us focus on collecting data that will provide evidence on the impact of our work. Publishing this first strategic approach will help us understand how others view our success, so that we can continue to refine and adapt our approach to better serve our purpose.