Elemental

Interesting news spotted in my current issue of CIBSE Journal that the Head of Sustainability role at Buro Happold which was recently advertised has been filled by Dan Phillips of the SEA. SEA are described in the press release as a design and innovation consultancy. Dan is an engineer by background, working for Battle McCarthy back in the mid-90’s, and Arup’s prior to that.

The reason I am blogging about this is it is fascinating to me that Buro Happold have opted for someone with a broader skillset than pure technical engineering. SEA will clearly have given Dan ’softer’ skills. This appointment is similar in some ways to BDP’s replacement of Trevor Butler with Richard Buckingham.

This blog has always had the strapline of ‘communicating’ sustainable solutions for a built environment, and it is increasingly being the case that pure technical ability is not enough to succeed in the sustainable built environment arena. Softer skills – communication, empathy and personability – are becoming at least as important as technical knowhow. Can these skills be learned? While not all soft skills come naturally or easy to most people, over time they can be honed.

admin Opinion

There were a lot of mergers and acquisitions in the last decade. Last year alone we saw DEGW merge with Davis Langdon, Parsons Brinckerhoff acquired by Balfour Beatty and Fulcrum merge with Mott MacDonalds. Earlier in the decade Whitby Bird, Hilson Moran and RYB:Konsult all, in different ways changed company ownership, mostly in order to reward their founders.

Building services consultancy is not the place to find get rich quick entrepreneurs. If it was, founders would be targeting IPO, and companies would be floating on the stock market. This doesn’t happen because consultancy is a fairly mature market and the average profitability of companies in the sector is low – somewhere between 5-10%. Typically, founders build up their companies because they love what they do, not because they want to become a millionaire. But the day (usually) comes when they want to retire. There is nothing wrong in founders wanting to exit a business and wanting to be rewarded for the work they have done in setting it up. But in the current economic climate, what options are available to them? And what of the staff who are left behind?

The tried and tested option used to be the partnership. It’s a common model in both architecture and consultancy. But I think partnerships are increasingly a less attractive option as employees increasingly cannot afford to buy into the company (effectively buying out the top layer of partners to finance their retirement). There are plenty still around – for example Gifford has 51 working partners, and as a company is 59 years old. The expansion in number of partners took place fairly fast over the past 2 years, and in theory defends them against predators.

But what if your staff cannot afford to buy out the top layer? What are your options then?

Merging with a larger organisation (who are interested in gaining the staff and probably your reputation) seems to have been the favoured route for consultancies in the noughties. Whilst good for the exiting founders (and despite protestations that the merger is in everyone’s interests, blah, blah, blah – they do tend to exit the merged company within 3 years), is it good for the staff?

Scott Berkun has a great post on why big companies can suck:

Status quo / Follower mentality – The bigger a company gets, the more it’s main attractive power for new employees is job security, rather than opportunity to grow, learn or take risks. The Innovator’s dilemma is real, and leaders who have big success are often the last to recognize when it’s time to move on. For anyone interested in progress, risk taking, change or growth potential, a large company is incredibly frustrating, as the dominant psychology is one of play it safe and political correctness. A running joke at Microsoft used to be that the best way to get a product idea to ship at Microsoft was to have a competitor do it first.

Some figures suggest M&A successes are as low as a third. Whilst this is US data, I suspect a similar picture is found in the UK. So not only do the staff gets disillusioned and leave, but the acquirer loses the key thing he bought – in a knowledge industry – your people are your assets.

So what will the next decade bring? There will undoubtedly be more acquisitions. Some disillusioned employees will leave and set up their own practices. But company structures may have to change to reward both founders and employees. Perhaps given the very low profit margins in the industry we would be better to look at alternative forms of legal enterprise (community interest companies)?

admin Management, Opinion Balfour Beatty, Fulcrum, Mergers and acquisitions, Mott MacDonald, Parsons Brinckerhoff, Scott Berkun

One would have to be living under a rock (or at least, abroad) not to have noticed that there will be a general election in the UK sometime in the next 6 months. What will this mean for the construction industry? Plenty of speculation about, but not much talk about actual political and economic schools of thought, especially when it comes to sustainability.

First things first. There is no standalone discipline of sustainability. Basically, you have to be sustainable at something. Like sustainable construction. But even if you are committed to sustainable construction there is no ‘one correct way’ to practice sustainability. What is one man’s medicine is another man’s poison. Often what differentiates ‘flavours’ of sustainability is the economic and political beliefs and drivers of the actors involved.

Bill McKibben in a post about global warming says:

Most political arguments don’t really have a right and a wrong, no matter how passionately they’re argued. They’re about human preferences…

He does then state that we can’t afford to depend on current political processes to fix global warming, which I agree with, but I’m talking here about sustainability in it’s broadest sense rather than singly focussing on the carbon and global warming issues (the environmental leg, which we have broad consensus on). When it comes to sustainability, there really is no right and wrong. Looking at social and economic factors will inevitably bring in political beliefs.

To illustrate what I mean, and for those who haven’t come across it, there’s a lovely graphic called the Political Compass which plots both economic and politic beliefs on it. Below is the graphic for the main political parties in the UK in 2008.

The Political Compass owes more than a nod to the Nolan Chart which plots personal freedom against economic freedom. The idea of both of these is to expand the old fashioned political notions of left and right.

The usefulness of this when looking at sustainability (think of those 3 legs – social, economic and environmental) has to be huge? If we recognise this now, we will be able to have much more informed conversations about sustainability in construction over the next decade.

My hope for 2010 would be that economics and politics will no longer be neutral factors (or worse, taboo), but rather explicit within sustainability strategies. Any comments?

admin Economics, Opinion Bill McKibben, Political Compass, politics, Sustainability

Long-time friend of the blog, Andrew Kinsey, Senior Sustainability Manager at the Athletes Village for Bovis Lend Lease, kindly invited myself and a few colleagues to have a nosey around the Athlete’s Village back at the beginning of November.
We had fantastic luck with the weather as you can see from the picture, which is a view from the rooftop viewing platform. The site is quite incredible. I know some of you will have managed to see round it during Open House in the summer, but I was not prepared for the scale of the place. It’s HUGE.

It’s also one of the cleanest, best maintained and non-threatening sites I’ve ever been on. No Pirelli calendars, builder’s butt cleavage nor wolf whistles to be witnessed. And the sense of industry? It was like being in a Richard Scarry picture book – diggers and workmen scurrying around, with a recession-busting productive atmosphere all round.

Andrew introduced us to some of the initiatives he’s been pushing forward, especially with regards to supply chain management from a sustainability perspective. He has been instrumental in driving forward the Achilles Building Confidence Contractor Accreditation with great success:

“Working in partnership with Bovis Lend Lease, Achilles has developed BuildingConfidence – a supplier pre-qualification and accreditation service for the UK construction industry.

BuildingConfidence provides benefits to buyers and suppliers by using:

• Web-based technologies to increase operational efficiencies and reduce the costs associated with pre-qualification for clients, major contractors and their suppliers
• On-site audits with industry leading auditors to help suppliers measure their own performance and share this data with their clients and major contractors.

BuildingConfidence is quickly becoming recognised as the standard for supplier excellence within the industry. Major contractors are using the service to evaluate their supply chains, drive up performance and forge longer lasting relationships with key suppliers.”

My timing for this post is impeccable, as two stories are in the news which now make much more sense and impact on me, having now visited the site.

Firstly the news that Nord’s substation has been completed. This project is the backbone of the development being, quite literally, the powerhouse for the development:

Its hard, dark, saturnine surface recalls the language of 19th century bridge and tunnel construction, examples of which are still a common feature of this post-industrial landscape. It also proves highly light reflective, with the effect that the building’s chiselled geometry is transformed into a series of starkly contrasting planes of light and shadow. This effect is made richer still by the brick’s slyly differentiated detailing. What at first appears to be an unmodulated surface proves, on closer inspection, to be divided into three strata of escalating intricacy.

The comments posted to the article show equal measures of love and hate for the building itself – a marmite of a building, if you will. I like it, but then, I’m an M&E engineer at heart – and it’s a big box around some M&E kit. What’s not to love?

The second piece of news is a report from the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012. Building magazine chose to run with the (not) shocking news that Zaha’s Aquatic Centre is not a particularly green building. Is anyone surprised by this?

The Water Cube in Beijing comprised just one quarter of the materials used by the 2012 Aquatic centre, a report examining the carbon footprint of the London 2012 Games has found.

Reading the report itself, it is clear that ‘on the ground’ a lot has been achieved. Which leads me back to the title of this post. London 2012 is a massive opportunity to test and make reality checks on aspirational targets which were set before we knew what was possible. Some targets we will meet or exceed, others we will have to revise. But the petri dish we are being offered is a fabulous opportunity to make leaps and bounds forward in our collective knowledge.

Thanks again to Andrew for being a great host!

admin Opinion 2012 Summer Olympics, Bovis Lend Lease, Carbon footprint, Green Building, Supply chain management

It was a funny old week, last week.

First we have the Clive James kerfuffle, subsequent to his essay “In praise of scepticism“. There was some dissent against James on Twitter (which I am increasingly becoming disillusioned with as a tool for proper discourse and debate – 140 characters is not enough space to make points properly unless you are phenomenally eloquent). Many were equating sceptiscism with denialism, which was overegging James’ views somewhat. But I didn’t make too much of a deal about it and trundled on.

Then we had the Tim Nicholson vs. Grainger case on Tuesday, which I will say no more about, but appears to have been one of the catalysts for what happened next.

On Wednesday night, Amanda Baillieu dared to voice dissent with regards to climate change on Twitter. Her initial tweet was:

I am becoming increasingly irritated by the green lobby and the idea that its to be treated like a religion http://is.gd/4N8sH

Followed by:

Basically believing in man made climate change is a bit like hoping that fairies live at the bottom of the garden.

There followed a fair amount of toing and froing with various parties, as I gawped from the sidelines. I pondered whether Amanda was negating low carbon design and resource efficiency along with this scepticism? Luckily she redefined how she felt in her editorial for BD on Friday. And this is when the “where is the evidence you refer to?” attacks really began to gain traction.

Now, I may disagree with Amanda (I’ve covered my Pascal’s Wager here), but like I said in that post, I tend to keep out of global warming debates – in a way, I don’t really care. In fact, if I had to embark on a global warming debate with a client every time we wanted to build anything, I’d still be staring at a blank sheet of paper. And despite currently coming down on the side of the climate change scientists, I’ve actually read a fair bit of Lomborg and Crichton, to act as a counterfoil to Monbiot and Stern (an important discipline as I outlined in my how to read non-fiction post). I suspect there may be those who have attacked Amanda’s article without reading any literature on the topic at all. Not good enough.

What many of the commenter’s fail to pick up, is that despite Amanda’s agnosticism (after all, she admits to scepticism, which whilst it might be cynical, is certainly not denial-ism) on climate change science, she still supports ‘green’ design:

“…there’s no argument that natural resources such as water need to be conserved and low-energy buildings make sense…”

So did Amanda really deserve the criticism she got in return? One of the most outraged was Justin Bere who managed to write two posts, one outlining the events on Twitter blow by blow (which is handy as now I don’t have to) and another in which he addresses the “evidence” argument. There are many others who exprssed outrage in the comments to the article (although with some showing support). But what really matters here is our actions, not the beliefs that are behind them. To quote John Stuart Mills’ “On Liberty“:

…the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise.

In other words, one should have the freedom to think as one wishes, and to feel as one does. This includes the freedom to opinion, and includes the freedom to publish opinions (aka freedom of speech). Mills also argued that censorship harms society, not only by limiting freedom, but because a banned opinion may be true or contain some truth, or will challenge the accepted one and prevent it becoming a mere dogma.

I shouldn’t have to point out that I’m a fan of freedom of speech – and I do think contrarians have a useful role in society. Even when we have reached a consensus opinion, we should continue to scrutinize and debate. As I’ve said before:

“…perhaps there is an opportunity to use antagonists such as Michael Crichton, Bjorn Lomborg and even Tim Worstall to check our thinking. Without doing so, we run the risk of heading down cul-de-sacs unquestioningly. Question everything.”

An argument often bandied around is that websites and forums are not the proper channel to hold debates such as these. This episode highlights the drawbacks of such technology, especially twitter. But, it’s better to have some debate than to gag anyone whose opinions don’t match our own. I’ll add Amanda to my list of ‘useful contrarians’ and hope a few more people potter off to read up on Mills.

admin Opinion Amanda Baillieu, Climate Change, Clive James, global warming, John Stuart Mill, Liberty, Michael Crichton, twitter

I’ve been geeking out over my gorgeous faux leather hard bound copy of the 2009 Ashrae Handbook – Fundamentals (SI units) which recently arrived in the post. One of  the perks of ASHRAE membership is an updated copy every year of one of the handbooks on a rolling schedule (something CIBSE have started to do too in recent years).

Anyway, in this year’s tome is a new chapter – Chapter 35 SUSTAINABILITY. Under ‘Characteristics of Sustainability’ is a clarifying few paragraphs on the difference between green and sustainable buildings. For reference:

Sustainability Addresses the Future

Sustainability is focused on the distant future (e.g., 30 to 50 years). Any actions taken under the name of sustainability must address the impact of present actions on conditions likely to prevail in that future time frame.

In designing the built environment, the emphasis has often been on the present or the near future, usually in the form of capital- or first-cost impact. As is apparent when life-cycle costing analysis is applied, capital cost assumes less importance the longer the future period under consideration.

This emphasis on the distant future can differentiate sustainable design from green design. Whereas green design addresses many of the same characteristics as sustainable design, it may also emphasise near-term impacts such as indoor environmental quality, operation and maintenance features, and meeting current client needs. This, green design may focus more on the immediate future (i.e. starting when the building is first constructed and then occupied). Sustainable design is of paramount importance to the global environment in the long-term while still incorporating features of green design that focus on the present and near future.

An interesting way to slice the problem, and makes me realise (by this definition, at least), most of the stuff that I am most interested in is green design, rather than sustainable design, occupant comfort being my raison d’etre. The chapter goes on to point out that HVAC&R engineers cannot by themselves create global sustainability (however, we all need to do our bit and encourage as many others as possible), and that sustainability has many contributors, is comprehensive and that technology plays only a partial role.

As green building rating systems continue to converge (BREEAM and LEED), I find a growing interest in keeping up to date with ASHRAE, which I have always found more ‘engineery’ than CIBSE (in that their technical guidance seems to have many more equations than CIBSE).

Given ASHRAE’s definition, which rating system is more sustainable (rather than green) – LEED or BREEAM? Something I’ll poder a while longer…

admin Opinion ashrae, BREEAM, CIBSE, green, LEED, Sustainable

I’m a big fan of Charles Handy and his Hollywood model as I have mentioned before here, here and here.

A post from Paul on team working and BIM caught my eye recently:

…but I find that some of the issues relating to adoption of BIM are simply an extension of the issues faced in adopting any kind of collaborative approach. This usually boils down to an assertion that successful collaboration only 20% technology, the other 80% is all about people and process.

This, I think, applies equally to BIM. And others echo my thoughts. … in respect of the need to build teams, to get people out of their old-style silo approaches and embrace an integrated, collaborative approach. He seeks to encourage:

• Trust (commitment that we were all working together)
• Enthusiasm (that this was an exciting group of people to work with, and that it was a good project)
• Appreciation (of the various skills that everyone brought to the project)
• Mutual respect (often based upon previous project experiences)

The workshop process he advocates sounds very similar to the approaches employed on numerous UK projects undertaken on a “partnering” basis since the 1994 Latham Report. He also favours the co-location of teams.

This was closely followed by a post from Dave Pollard on Gen Y and a preferred style of working:

An interesting side-effect of this that I’ve observed in organizations with many young people is that, to Gen Y’ers, the ‘costs’ of compliance with ineffective constraints (processes, restrictions on software access, and rules) quickly exceed the value (job security), so they are finding workarounds that bypass these constraints and set up ‘markets’ for other ways of doing things (use of processes that they’ve imported from friends’ organizations or from previous experience, or use of free commercial software tools). The use of these unapproved ‘insecure’ processes and tools has set the stage in many organizations for a culture war between the older, command-and-control style of senior management and the new, peer-to-peer, workaround-based style of Gen Y’ers, powered mainly by social networking. As Shirky puts it (and Dave Snowden has illustrated in many case studies) “employees do better at sharing information with one another directly than when they go through official channels.” It enables them to do their jobs more effectively, and for many employees (especially the young) that’s more important than doing what they’re told. The result is an epic battle for control of what goes on in the organization, and in fact for control of the organization.

The move towards a new way of working seems inevitable to me in the next ten years (I’m being cautious with my timescales here). The ‘perfect storm’ of an increasingly disaffected workforce, a recession (which so far seems to have spawned many freelancers through choice or need) and the growth of the tools necessary to work in this ‘new’ collaborative way has enormous potential.

What does this mean for the industry? For clients, it brings both benefit and risk. This way of working will be cheaper for the client but less ‘legitimate’ than dealing with large consultancies. For instance, does the client have a contract with each and every consultant or is there a better way to broker such work?

And what does this mean for the large consultancies? Are they going to have to compete with the world of freelancing? What impact will this have?

The key, and current sticking point, as Dave Pollard alludes to, is the marketplace or brokerage network for managing relationships and legal matters. LinkedIn is a start but it’s not quite there yet. Does anyone know of anything which exists currently?

admin Opinion

Last Monday I attended Green Monday, a monthly networking event for corporate climate change leaders in London. I was first alerted to Green Monday by Phil back in September, but this month was the first time my calendar had conspired to allow me to attend.

The event kicked off with a panel discussion and then went on to round table discussions. I really enjoyed the panel discussion – some highlights of which I jotted down on the crackberry (I’d been very remiss and forgot pen and paper).

First up was Dr Peter White of Procter & Gamble who was keen to emphasis they exercise no trade-offs. Meaning that it should be possible to have both sustainability AND performance, rather than compromising with a sub-standard product. Coincidently, I am currently reading We-Think
by Charles Leadbetter and P&G are featured heavily in it in the chapter on We-Think business. According to the book P&G have set a goal of getting 50% of their new ideas from external sources and encourages open-innovation. All its patents will be released either 5 years after they are lodged or 3 years after a product is shipped. So the innovative new detergent which washes at 15ºC which Peter referenced, should in theory be in the public domain within 3 years – which can only be a good thing for climate change. This is a vast shift in IP strategy and something all companies should be thinking about, if not yet implementing. The models of business are changing.

Next up was Marie Louise Ter Boek of McDonalds. Colleagues had scoffed at the idea of McD’s having the audacity to sit on such a panel, but times have moved on. The “big bad corporates” are learning and evolving and we are all playing catch-up with each other. Last year’s greenwashers can turn out to be this year’s heroes. Anyway, Marie was heavily referencing DEFRA’s framework which was very timely as I had re-read the summaries that morning. Written by Futerra, there are two strategies  for positively communicating climate change: Rules of the Game (pdf) (relevant to changing attitudes) (long version available from DEFRA here (pdf, 48pages)) and New Rules:New Game (pdf) (relevant to behaviours). Recommended reading and hold an explanation as to why eco-bling such as urban wind turbines might act as a catalyst to further action – big socially visible actions can lead to smaller actions such as energy saving lightbulbs, so whilst we engineers lament the physical energy contribution, we are missing the social knock-on effects – something to ponder).

The third speaker was Alan Knight who was frustrated by our current language of doom and gloom. Do we talk ourselves down? He was keen to emphasis enthusiasm and ambition. What does the future world look like? Imagine a world of 20% of today’s carbon, no poverty, no obesity, diabetes etc. He was also keen to promote the business case for framing solutions in a positive way. As he said, there is no business case for famine (he was referring here to Lovelock’s prediction of 8 billion dying). There is an opportunity to reengineer today’s lifestyle to be 20% carbon but edit out bad choices. Again, no trade-offs. Requires an air of optimism – don’t talk ourself into defeat. Alan “blogs” here (no RSS and very few posts).

The final speaker was Jeremy Leggett of Solar Century. I had high hopes of fireworks given his voice over at CiS, but he was remarkably calm and calculated. He talked of the triple crunch of climate, financial and energy. Asset assessment is, in his opinion, systemically wrong (gas and oil). He was keen to promote The Oil Crunch Report authored by Arup, FirstGroup, Foster + Partners, Scottish and Southern Energy, Solarcentury, Stagecoach Group, Virgin Group, and Yahoo. I’ve not had a chance to read it yet, but the thrust is that a peak in cheap, easily available oil production is likely to hit by 2013, posing a grave risk to the UK and world economy. Other interesting tidbits from Jeremy included the fact that 18 of 27 european countries now have FIT (feed in tariffs). He was also keen to point out that there is no magic bullet – solar is one of maybe 50 families of alternative technologies.

The roundtable discussion afterwards was broken into different topics and I opted for commercial real estate. The table discussed the zero carbon consultation and experience varied from those who had read it several times to those who hadn’t heard of it at all. The majority of us however agreed that we had consultation fatigue. Then it was time to schmooze. Like any of these events, it takes a couple of attendances to build relationships, so no million pound deals were made, but I was pleased overall.

All in all, it was a good gig. I’ve applied for a space again next month. It’s a much more organised and less rowdy event than London Green Drinks (which is currently overrun in it’s current venue – making it a hot, sweaty and slightly unpleasant experience).

mel starrs Opinion business, Climate Change, London, renewables

This post is inspired by a conversation I had on Twitter on Sunday afternoon with @dbourbon, @SuButcher and @Revit3D. Yes, I know I bang on about Twitter far too often, but seriously. LOVE it. Revit3D wrote a blog post which I have tried to follow up here.

The conversation started along the lines of debating why some practices (both architectural and engineering) were failing to use 3D software. Is it fear of the unknown? Is it the pain of learning something new?

I have a theory based on my own experience of the timeline of engineering software over the past 10-20 years.

• Firstly, I believe 2D CAD was a red herring of sorts. 2D CAD was not a design tool (architects might argue that it is, but I define a design tool as something with some kind of calculation engine in there somewhere). It was (and is) a drafting tool. Engineers and architects who were used to the old skool way of drafting a sketch to be worked up on paper by draughtspersons, used the same way of working when 2D CAD was introduced. An experienced engineer’s time was too valuable to be wasted learning new IT skills, and so , in general, they didn’t.
• Those who were young and inexperienced were sometimes given the time to experiment with CAD (my brain is still hard wired to AutoCAD LT 98 – I get very frustrated when Google SketchUp doesn’t have the same buttons in the same places). But still, was not a design tool.
• Some engineering tools, such as Hevacomp and Cymap, started to introduce 2D design tools – the ability to draw a line on screen, define for instance, air volumes, and come up with ductwork sizing and fan sizing calculations. A fantastic time saver, especially if there are a number of redesigns. However, many steered away from this and still used good old paper and pen mark-up with a ductulator to hand. Because, if you had to mark up the sketch anyway to give to the CAD technician, what was the point of doing it on screen? (are you beginning to see what happened here?)
• About the same time (early nineties) we had the last recesssion. Many of the Gen X engineers who might otherwise have become IT savvy dropped out and the hole can still be seen in the data.
• The next iteration was IES and TAS. But a strange thing happened. Who was supposed to use these tools? They were first and foremost design tools, but they looked a bit like CAD. So, the young (cheap) inexperienced engineers were encouraged to go off and teach themselves how to use the software. Nothing wrong with this, persay.

However, in effect I would argue we ended up with one group who could drive the software, but didn’t know what the destination was supposed to look like, and another group who saw a black box of tricks which spewed out the wrong answers (their experience often trumped the output from the software, which inadvertently was suffering from ‘rubbish in, rubbish out’ syndrome as the ‘drivers’ didn’t always understand where they supposed to be going).

Now this is a massive generalisation, and there were some practices who embraced the technology head-on. However, I also still know some practices who swear by ductulators, paper and pen, so not everyone is moving at the same speed here.

As Gen Y move into the industry, their expectations are for 3D tools which do everything from the one ‘box’. It’s a natural expectation and indeed the way that BIM is moving.It’s a little like the leapfrog effect one sometimes sees in technologies in the developing world, where for example, the mass ownership of landlines is eclipsed by the use of mobile phones.

But how do we deal with the gap between those who “get” BIM and those who, either consciously or unconsciously, have got left behind? I don’t know the answer to that one, although I do believe in leading by example.

Any thoughts – please leave a comment either here or over at Revit3D’s blog.

mel starrs Opinion architect, AutoCAD, Building Information Modeling, Computer-aided design, Engineering, twitter

The regional materials credits in LEED are interesting. Obviously written with the US in mind, “regional” is defined as a 500 mile radius. For London this extends as far as Denmark, which could be fairly handy if you’re looking for triple glazed windows or funky radiators.

I suspect if you were in the north of Scotland this would extend to mainly the sea. Bladderwrack huts, anyone?

BTW, I used this handy website to create the image.

There’s an interesting juxtaposition to the 100 mile diet which is obviously much more onerous. I’ve toyed with the idea of a 100 mile diet before, but given the massive centralised distribution infrastructure of food in the UK (Abel and Cole are as much affected as Tesco, so just because it’s organic doesn’t mean it hasn’t been driven half way round the UK), it’s very difficult to implement. The definition of local food varies in the UK:

Sustain (The Alliance For Better Food and Farming) offers the following definitions for local food:

• produced within 30 miles of the point of sale (PoS)
• produced within 50 miles of PoS
• in towns and small cities produced within 50 miles of PoS
• for large cities produced within 70 miles of POS
• produced in the county.

Enough of food, back to materials. The intent of the LEED credit is: “to increase demand for building materials and products that are extracted and manufactured within the region, thereby supporting the use of indigenous resources and reducing the environmental impacts resulting from transportation.”

So, is this desirable, possible or feasible for the UK? What is the equivalent measure in BREEAM?

Local materials is something which pops up in a number of manifestos, including BioRegional’s One Planet Living (#4 Local and Sustainable Materials – Destructive resources exploitation (eg in construction and manufacturing) increases environmental damage and reduces benefits to local community).  The topic is expanded further here:

The embodied energy, durability, toxicity and ecological footpring of materials should be a standard construction consideration, going beyond the UK Government’s current understanding of “zero carbon homes”, which only includes post-build emissions.

Thirty percent of road freight in the UK carries building materials across the country for no good reason. Government building projects should follow local sourcing policies, and local authorities should provide similar policies to developers in pre-application planning discussions. Local and regional reclamation strategies are an easy way for government to promote the use of sustainable materials.

Governments should also make sure they only use the best available materials on their own projects, both as a matter of principle, for example by only using FSC cerified timber, and in some cases to help develop nascent markets such as in limecrete. Set minimum reclaimed materials content for planning briefs or include reclaimed materials in the government procurement system.

There is obviously a lot more here than just using “local” materials – “best available materials” could be interpreted in a number of ways, and cost is an issue which isn’t factored in.

So what does BREEAM say about “local”? Part of MAN 3 Construction Site Impacts asks for transport movements of materials to be recorded, however, there is no targets or limits set:

BREEAM does not set targets, as these are very project specific. For guidance on setting targets, refer to DTI’s Construction Industry KPI Pack; this series of documents guides the reader through setting targets for their own projects.

The next credit to look at is the sometimes controversial Mat 1 Materials specification which references the Green Guide (which has had a certain amount of flack since launching the new version last year). This methodology includes for some (but not all) transport impacts. From the methodology (pdf, 71 pages):

6.7
Transport
6.7.1
Transport to factory gate
For transport of materials to the factory, data is obtained from the manufacturers for the distance travelled, mode of transport (e.g. sea, rail, and road), vehicle or ship type and average loads or number of deliveries and return load. If data is not provided, then BRE will use default data provided by the Department for Transport from the continuing Survey of Roads Goods Transport.
6.7.2
Transport from factory to site
Manufacturers are asked to provide data on the typical methods of transport of the product to the site. This includes distance travelled, vehicle type and average load and return load if any. In the absence of this information, then BRE will use default data described in 6.7.1.
6.7.3
Calculating inventory data for transport
6.7.3.1
Road transport excluding municipal waste collection, tractor and trailer and Van < 3.5 tonnes
For road transport, the overall distance and tonnes km travelled by each vehicle type is calculated based on the average number of deliveries. Fuel consumption is calculated based on direct fuel consumption figures obtained from UK DfT Road Freight Statistics 2005 and the overall distance travelled.
Infrastructure for road transport including road building and maintenance, lorry and tyre maintenance and replacement is not included within the Environmental Profiles.
6.7.3.2
Rail, water and air transport and municipal waste collection, tractor and trailer and van < 3.5 tonnes
For rail and ship transport, the overall tonnes km travelled by each transport type is calculated.
Ecoinvent models for the infrastructure and energy associated with transport are then used based on the total tonnes km travelled by each mode of transport.
Rail transport is assumed to be a mix of electric and diesel, based on a European average.
Infrastructure for rail, water and air transport is not included within the Environmental Profiles.

Now reading this (and I could be wrong and will happily stand corrected) neither air freight nor shipping of building materials is counted in the Green Guide.  The impact of this may be minimal – but if materials are shipped from say, China, the environmental profile may work out better than locally produced but road transported materials. Odd. Correction: I *was* reading this wrong – shipping and rail is included, but the environmental cost of building and maintaining roads, rail and shipping is not. Air travel is another issue, but I’m not aware of many building materials shipping in planes.

So, local is a relative term and is only one factor to be considered when looking at materials. LEED and BREEAM have very different ways of assessing the “regionality” of a material, neither of which are perfect. Neither explicitly cover local employment either, which is currently a hot topic in the UK. As I’ve said before, this is where sustainability strays into the field of politics and outside of most companies comfort zone. It’s all about balance.

Personally, I prefer to think in terms of the Natural Step framework, licenced in the UK by Forum for the Future. Two of the four system conditions explicitly refer to materials and are reflected the thinking behind such initiatives as Cradle to Cradle*:

• Society mines and disperses materials faster than they are returned to the Earth’s crust (examples include oil, coal and metals such as mercury and lead).
• Society produces substances faster than they can be broken down by natural processes—if they can be broken down at all (examples of such substances include dioxins, DDT and PCBs).

This isn’t as tough as it first sounds:

At first reading, the system conditions and basic principles might seem to imply that we must rid society of all materials extracted from the earth and all substances produced by society and that, further, we must never disturb a natural landscape. But that’s not what they mean. The problem is not that we mine and use heavy metals, or use chemicals and compounds produced by society, or disrupt natural processes, or even temporarily interfere with people’s capacity to meet their basic needs. It is, rather, that our industrial system has developed so that substances extracted from the earth and produced by society will continue to build up indefinitely in natural systems. That means a progressive buildup of pollutants and substances that not only harm us directly but damage natural processes that have taken billions of years to develop.

By applying these principles to any specific situation, a hierarchy of requirements will develop. Whilst it would be lovely to have a one-size-fits-all tickbox solution, in reality each situation is slightly different. Then again, I would say that. If I didn’t believe it to be the case, my work here would be done and I would be off doing aromatherapy!

*Cradle to Cradle and Natural Step are very much seperate, but complementary frameworks. Interestingly, LEED now reward the use of Cradle to Cradle certification.

mel starrs Opinion BREEAM, impacts, LEED, materials, transport