Contents
Introduction:
a year of progress
Industry
response
Sustainable
Construction Focus Group
Report
Conference
The business case for more sustainable
property
CIB Sustainable Construction Task Group
The Movement for Innovation
Demonstration
Projects
A Commitment to People - "Our Biggest
Asset"
Confederation
of Construction Clients
The
Clients' Charter
Sector
Sustainability Strategies
Government response
Greening Government
Environmental
Management Systems
Procurement
The Government Construction Clients' Panel
Regulation & fiscal changes
Building
Regulations Part L: Conservation of fuel and powers
Aggregates
levy
Climate
change levy
The
Construction Best Practice Programmes
Local
Government Task Force
Housing
Forum
Research
The Construction research and innovation
strategy panel
The
Construction innovation and research programme
Measuring Progress and Reporting
National
Indicators
Industry-level
indicators
Construction
key performance indicator pack 2000
Other KPIs
Company-level
indicators
Project-level
indicators
Sector-level
indicators
Reporting
Government
encouragement
The
Turnbull Report
Other
Recommendations
The
Market
Forward
Look
Some
useful links
Introduction:
a year of progress
The Government
published its strategy for more sustainable construction,
Building a Better Quality of Life, in April 2000. It
identified priority areas for action, emphasised the importance
of targets and indicators to measure progress, and encouraged
the construction industry to actively adopt more sustainable
practices.This report reviews the work that has been done
to take forward the sustainability agenda which was identified
in Building a better quality of life. The report also
notes other initiatives - from both government and within
the industry - which have built on the sustainable principles
set out in Building a Better Quality of Life.
The table
below outlines some of the major events related to sustainability
that have occurred since the publication of the government's
sustainable construction strategy.
|
Date
|
Action
|
|
2000
|
|
April
|
Publication
of Building a Better Quality of Life
Publication
of Towards Sustainability
by Sustainable construction focus group
Publication
of the 1999 Construction
Industry KPIs
|
|
May
|
Launch
of Waste Strategy
2000
Launch
of The Knowledge
Exchange website
|
|
June
|
2nd
Environmental Management Systems (EMS) Seminar
National
Benchmarking Conference
|
|
July
|
Conference:
Towards Sustainable
Construction – Building a better way of life
Publication
of Achieving Sustainability
in Construction Procurement
Creation
of The Client's
Charter by CCC
Launch
of 2000 Partners
in Innovation research programme with sustainability
as key theme
|
|
September
|
Steel
Sector Strategy Committee set up
Cement
and Concrete industry initiate sector strategy
First
meeting of National Construction Benchmarking Forum
Construction
Best Practice Programme publishes revised factsheets
on construction sustainability issues
|
|
October
|
Publication
of Construction
– the Price of Waste
|
|
November
|
Publication
of M4I report and toolkits: A
Commitment to People "Our Biggest Asset"
|
|
Other
events in 2000:
|
DTI
set up 'Sustainability Strategy Pioneers Group'
Publication
of 20 Good Ideas
by Housing Forum
Report
of Key Performance Indicator Working Group to Minister
for Construction.
|
|
2001
|
|
January
|
Publication
of The business
case for more sustainable property, findings of
focus group research
Publication
of Achieving a
Better Quality of Life – with report on progress
on headline and construction-related indicators
|
|
March
|
Formation
of CIB Sustainable Construction Task Group
|
|
April
|
Institution
of Civil Engineers announces sector strategy objectives
|
|
June
|
Publication
of the 2000 Construction Consultants KPIs by ACE, RIBA,
RICS and ICE
|
|
July
|
Launch
of Concrete Futures
programme by British Cement Association
Publication
of the 2000 Construction
Industry KPIs by CBPP
|
|
September
|
Publication
of M4I’s Environmental
Performance Indicators for Sustainable Construction
Publication
of Sustainable
construction: company indicators, final report of
CIRIA/DTI research project
|
Industry
Response
Sustainable
Construction Focus Group
Report
(April 2000)
The Sustainable Construction Focus Group was established by
the Construction Confederation to bring together people from
throughout the industry to meet the challenge of sustainability.
The Group published a report: Towards sustainability -
a strategy for the construction industry in April 2000.
This discussed how to achieve sustainability, how to raise
awareness and identified barriers to achieving greater sustainability.
Conference
(July 2000)
Following publication of the report, an industry conference,
Towards sustainable construction - building a better way
of life, was held in July 2000. The conference explored
ways in which the construction industry could achieve greater
sustainability and was attended by representatives from over
700 organisations. The proceedings of the conference are available
at the Construction
Confederation website
The
business case for more sustainable property (January 2001)
The focus group also commissioned Kingston University and
Drivers Jonas to examine the business case for more sustainable
property. They investigated how far the business case, as
opposed to the environmental case, has developed in commercial
property markets.
The findings
(published January 2001) point to a business case that is
real and rapidly changing attitudes. There is awareness of
sustainability within the investment community. Key investors
are beginning to adopt sustainable policies. They recognise
a powerful case based on risk containment and competitive
advantage. But the realisation of this high-level investment
strategy in terms of building procurement and investment purchase
policies is not yet fully developed. Further research in this
area is being carried out.
CIB
Sustainable Construction Task Group
The Task
Group was set up in March 2001, under the chairmanship of
Sir Martin Laing, with the objective of building on both Building
a Better Quality of Life and Towards Sustainability
and taking forward the industry's response to the climate
change and environmental agenda.
The Task
Group has an initial nine month lifespan, during which it
will seek to co-ordinate current projects on Key Performance
Indicators and benchmarking (see Measuring Progress & Reporting
below), progress the development of the business case for
sustainable development, identify new M4I demonstration projects
and continue to raise awareness of sustainability issues within
the industry.
The
Movement for Innovation (M4I)
Demonstration
Projects
The
Movement for Innovation (M4I) was set up following the publication
in 1998 of Rethinking Construction - the report of Sir John
Egan's Construction Task Force (see Chapter 2 of Building
a Better Quality of Life). M4I promotes innovation and best
practice within industry and to its clients. By running a
programme of demonstration projects, demanding targets are
being pursued. 256 projects, with a construction value of
£4.7bn, have been submitted so far. 56 projects are part of
the Local Government Task Force Initiative to introduce best
value principles to local government construction. In the
housing sector, over 85 demonstration projects, identified
by the Housing Forum, display innovative approaches to housing
construction, renovation and repair.
See www.m4i.org.uk
for more, including their project database.
A
Commitment to People ‘Our Biggest Asset’
(November 2000)
Respect for People is a keystone for sustainable development.This
M4I report puts forward a business case based on: respect;
recruitment; retention of more and better people. The associated
toolkits address action themes, including diversity and lifelong
learning. 285 separate toolkit trials are currently underway,
with another 200 organisations expressing an interest in piloting
the pack. The toolkits will be more widely available later
this year.
Confederation
of Construction Clients
The
Clients’ Charter
Created in response to a challenge by the Deputy Prime Minister
(July 2000), the Client’s Charter sets the minimum standards
for construction procurement, with a programme of increasingly
demanding targets to drive up standards. Charter clients can
benchmark their performance against the programme’s other
clients. Members of the Confederation of Construction Clients,
who run the scheme, are required to commit to the Charter.
By doing so they are recognised as practitioners of best practice.
See www.clientsuccess.org.uk
Sector
Sustainability Strategies
Industry,
with the encouragement of the DTI (and the former DETR), has
been developing and acting on sectoral sustainability strategies.
Such strategies demonstrate that a sector is willing to meet
the challenges, and gain the benefits, of sustainability.
The
construction industry recognises that sector sustainability
strategies provide a framework for action on a basis wider
than the individual company. Such strategies permit companies
within sectors to capture the best practice of better performing
companies and benchmark performance. By proactively engaging
representative bodies with sustainable development principles
across each sector, these strategies give new impetus to what
has already been developed (eg competitiveness or training
strategies).
A
number of the construction sector representative bodies have
engaged in the work:
Civil
Engineering: led
by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), this is the
most advanced. ICE stated its intent to produce a sector
strategy in April 2001. The strategy is due to be presented
in Spring 2002. See www.ice.org.uk
Building Services: the Building Services Research and Information Association (BSRIA) is
bringing together representatives from the Building Services
industry (with the help of professional trade and other
representative organisations) to develop a strategy and
promote its implementation. A stakeholders group is developing
a high impact awareness raising campaign, A
Fanfare for sustainability. This will announce the
strategy and some of the initial outputs, as well as sign-post
existing material.
Steel: The Steel Sector
Strategy Committee was set up (September 2000) on behalf
of the British Constructional Steelwork Association (BCSA),
Corus and the Steel Construction Institute (SCI). Comments
have been invited from the industry concentrating on steel
in use: design, manufacture, erection, long-term impacts
in use, re-use and recycling.
Cement & Concrete: Industry
representatives met (September 2000) to discuss developing
a strategy. Work will be taken forward in the context of
the Concrete Futures programme established
by the British Cement Association (BCA) and launched on
27 July 2001. This draws on European and other international
inputs. See www.bca.org.uk
DTI
published its own sustainability strategy and set up a Pioneer's
Group for those sectors of industry (including construction)
that are developing (or have developed) sustainability strategies.
The above sectors are members of the group.
Other
construction industry sectors who have expressed an interest
in developing sustainability strategies are the wood panel
industries, aggregates (through the British Marine Aggregates
Producers Association - BMAPA), the heritage building renovation
sector and property sector.
Government
Response
Greening
Government
The
public sector is a major client of the construction industry.
There is considerable scope for government initiatives, such
as the Waste Strategy
2000, to impact on the procurement of goods and services
from the industry. Legislative constraints, such as the Climate
Change Levy and Aggregates tax also encourage changes to more
sustainable ways of working.
Environmental
Management Systems (EMSs)
These systems offer the most comprehensive solution
to addressing the environmental impacts of government operations.
Following a second major EMS seminar in June 2000 attended
by 200 departmental representatives, 9 departments have now
implemented EMSs certified to ISO 14001 international standard;
other departments will follow shortly.
Procurement
Through procurement practices, the Government is
encouraging markets for recycled products. Michael Meacher
announced (July 2000) that the Government will only purchase
legally felled timber from sustainably managed sources. Progress
will be reported in the Green
Ministers Report 2001.
For
more information see the Greening government section of the
DTLR website: www.environment.dtlr.gov.uk/greening/
Government
Construction Clients’ Panel
The Government
Construction Clients’ Panel (GCCP) consists of representatives
from Government departments, their agencies and non-departmental
public bodies. It forms part of the Achieving Excellence initiative.
It aims to ensure that all government clients have the techniques
to become and remain best practice construction clients.
Achieving
sustainability in construction procurement: the sustainability
action plan (July 2000) recognises that sustainability
is compatible with the value for money approach required by
government procurement policy. For all new projects, it requires departments to carry out environmental assessments using
BREEAM (or equivalents) by March 2001 and that
- by
the same date, all projects achieve ‘good’ or better rating.
- by
March 2002, all new build projects achieve at least ‘very
good’ and refurbishment projects ‘good’.
- by
March 2003, all new build projects achieve ‘excellent’ and
refurbishment projects ‘very good’.
Currently,
16 central Government client organisations have submitted
proposals for implementing all areas of the Sustainability
Action Plan by March 2003. The GCCP Sustainability Action
Group is currently developing a toolkit to help departments,
agencies and NDPBs implement the Action Plan. This should
be finalised in the next few weeks.
See
the Office of Government Commerce website at www.property.gov.uk
Regulation
& Fiscal Changes
Building
Regulations Part L: Conservation of fuel and power
Substantial changes to Part L of the Building Regulations
are in prospect with amending legislation and new Approved
documents L1 (dwellings) and L2 (other buildings) expected
during October 2001. The aim is to further cut carbon dioxide
emissions and the costs of heating and hot water in new dwellings
by up to 25% . The prospective changes were published in April
2001 (see www.safety.dtlr.gov.uk/bregs/br06Q.htm).
They include:
- Better
fabric insulation and airtightness
- New
efficiency standards for central heating boilers
- Improved
standards for space heating and hot water systems controls
- Standards
for internal lamps and external lighting to dwellings
- New
performance standards for shading of windows, boiler efficiencies,
air conditioning, mechanical ventilation , lighting fittings
and energy meters in non-domestic buildings.
- New
standards for commissioning and testing of installations
and the provision of operating instructions for householders
and commercial and industrial building occupiers.
- Widen
the scope of Part L so that more types of work on existing
building stock is controlled i.e. boiler and window replacement.
These
changes will come into effect in the spring of 2002, but as
indicated in the June 2000 consultation document (www.safety.dtlr.gov.uk/bregs/consult/eep/index.htm)
three further stages of amendments are envisaged up to 2008
that would raise standards even higher and effect existing
stock even more.
See
www.safety.dtlr.gov.uk/bregs
Aggregates
Levy
The
aggregates levy, applicable to any sand, gravel or crushed
stone extracted in or imported into the UK, will come into
effect from 1st April 2002. It will be charged at a single
flat rate of £1.60 per tonne (with VAT payable on the value
of sales inclusive of aggregate levy).
The
levy aims to bring about benefits by: making the price of
aggregates better reflect environmental costs in line with
the ‘polluter pays principle’; encouraging greater use of
recycled aggregates; and raising revenues which could be used
to lower other distortionary taxes in the economy and deliver
local environmental improvements – for instance through a
new ‘sustainability fund' aimed at delivering local environmental
benefits to areas subject to the environmental costs of quarrying.
See
www.hmce.gov.uk
Climate
change levy
The
Climate change levy is a new tax on energy use in industry,
commerce, agriculture and the public sector. It was introduced
in April 2001. The tax varies in its effect as some organisations
are eligible for discount - for instance, if they have, as
energy intensive consumers, signed up to energy saving targets
agreed between the Government and relevant trade associations.
Some energy sources or uses of energy are also exempt (for
example, certain forms of renewable energy).
See
www.energy-efficiency.gov.uk
The
Construction Best Practice Programme
Sustainability
is being embedded across the construction best practice programme
(CBPP). With the BRE Centre for Sustainable Construction,
they reviewed and updated their sustainable construction resources.
Consequently, the areas of social responsibility, environmental
assessment and reporting by companies were developed. The
business improvement themes were also revised to emphasise
procurement; culture and people; and benchmarking.
The
CBPP’s sustainable construction publications were revised
(Sept 2000). These include the general fact sheet and action
sheets for contractors, designers and suppliers. The press
campaign has concentrated on waste, demonstrating that there
are business benefits from acting sustainably.
The
construction industry KPIs, which are disseminated through
the CBPP, are developed by the industry-wide KPI Project Management
Group chaired by DTI. The CI KPIs currently only provide indicators
on economic issues (with the exception of one safety KPI and
two environmental Additional Indicators). It is planned to
extend the CI KPIs to include measures of economic, social
and environmental performance.
A
website is being developed (with the BRE Centre for Sustainable
Construction). It will offer search facilities of CBPP sustainable
construction resources tailored to local authorities. There
is already an extensive sustainable construction element to
www.cbpp.org.uk, the
main CBPP site.
Local
Government Task Force
The
Local Government Task Force (LGTF) was set up (March 2000)
to promote the Rethinking Construction agenda within local
authorities. The LGTF is seeking demonstration projects from
local government. Over 50 authorities have made expressions
of interest. Its work touches on many of the same issues as
sustainability. For instance, a joint LGTF and Housing Forum
working group has produced the
20 Good Ideas Leaflet.
This promotes rethinking refurbishment, repairs and
maintenance in social housing.
The
LGTF agreed (March 2001) a Work Programme which identified
a key area of work as being to develop
and support sustainability issues. They are establishing
a new LGTF Working Group to work in partnership with the Sustainable
Construction unit at the BRE, and subsume their fledgling
Local Authority Sustainable Construction Network (LASCN).
The new group decided in July to widen the scope of membership
to encompass all major public sector partners (eg CIPFA, LGA,
IDeA), explore areas of regional activity around the country
and commence the construction of an embryonic regional network.
In addition, it would develop a work programme to highlight
both the tangible and intangible benefits of sustainable construction,
and provide a trialling programme aimed to assist local authorities
adopt sustainable construction (to be submitted to the LGTF
Board in December 2001). A progress report in September proposed
the group adopt the name of WellBuilt
– the Local Authority Sustainable Construction Network.
For
more, see www.lgtf.org.uk
Housing
Forum
The
Housing Forum (launched December 1998) spans the private,
public and social sectors. The Forum’s purpose is to bring
together the parties involved in the house building supply
chain to achieve change and innovation in construction and
renovation. It aims to continuously improve quality, efficiency,
value for money and sustainability.
The
Housing Forum demonstration project report Emerging
Issues and Lessons (May 2001), cites 95 projects as either
demonstration or approved projects. 76% of projects now include
at least one aspect of the respect for people agenda in their
targets, and of these, 55% have chosen reduction of accidents
as key. Over half of all projects address sustainability,
covering the product, process and performance of new homes.
Reducing site waste is a key target for 29% of the projects.
The need to assess whole life costs is becoming particulary
important, with social landlords taking the lead by focussing
on this issue.
The
Housing Forum also set up a sustainability working group,
which published the report Six
guiding principles to improve the sustainability of the housing
construction industry (July 2001) as an attempt to demystify
sustainability. The six principles referred to are: reduce
CO2 emissions; minimise pollution; consider whole
life costs; use resources to their maximum utility; provide
fore integrated communities; consult and engage existing communities.
For
more, see www.thehousingforum.org.uk
Research
Construction
Research and Innovation Strategy Panel
The
Construction Research and Innovation Strategy Panel (CRISP)
was formed as a joint industry and government panel (July
1995). It identifies and develops selected priorities for
research funders and helps to set the agenda for construction
research and innovation.
CRISP
seeks to identify missing
knowledge and to promote the development of the missing
tools that can help the application of that knowledge through
an industry research strategy. It encourages public and private
sector funders, and those responsible for research programmes,
to adopt this strategy.
CRISP
operates through a number of (time-limited) task groups.
The task group on sustainable construction has identified
the following key issues:
- identifying
and promoting research to develop tools for greater sustainability
- encouraging
research funders to include sustainable construction research
and innovation at an appropriate level in their programme
-
influencing the development of a research and development
database related to sustainable construction.
The
Construction Innovation and Research Programme
The
DTI's Construction Innovation and Research programme has an
annual budget of some £17 million to promote research in support
of innovation, improved competitiveness, and more sustainable
construction. Sustainability is the underlying theme of the
programme: all funded projects address sustainability in terms
of economic profitability, social awareness or environmental
responsibility.
Sustainability is also directly addressed by key priority
areas directly relevant to sustainable construction (for instance,
whole life costs). The portfolio of sustainable construction
research consists of around 90 ongoing projects at any one
time. The following are some examples of the sort of work
supported.
Project: Improving waste management in construction
Contractor:
Bovis Lend Lease
Status:
completed October 2000
Description: This project quantified and
specified in the report Construction
– the price of Waste:
- current
levels of construction waste per trade on commercial projects
- the
major waste producers on site and how to reduce the quantity
- how
time spent at the design stage reduces site waste
-
innovative solutions from contractors that can prevent site
waste
-
recycling/re-use of materials that is cost-effective
-
a project environmental benefit analysis
Project: Constructing a prototype cardboard building
Contractor:
Buro Happold
Status:
Ongoing
Description: This project proposes to demonstrate
the possibilities, and to assess the benefits, of innovative
uses of cardboard within buildings. Cardboard is almost entirely
made from recycled material, and it possible to make cardboard
products with sufficient compressive strength to carry structual
loads, thereby displacing the use of other more energy and
material-intensive products (such as steel). This can than
bring benefits in terms of reduced energy and material usage.
The main output of this project will be a full-scale usable
building. This is almost completed, and has been built as
part of a school in Essex.
Project: Sustainability Accounting
Contractor:
Stanger Science and Environment
Status:
New (commenced July 2001)
Description:
The main project objective is to develop a method for assessing
the business case for sustainable construction. Specifically,
it aims to identify, assess and where possible, quantify (ideally,
in monetary terms) the wider environmental and social costs
and/or benefits associated with sustainable construction initiatives.
It also aims to widely disseminate the research findings to
encourage take up and use of sustainability accounting techniques
within the construction industry. It will thereby contribute
to encouraging the adoption of more sustainable construction
activities and practices within industry.
See
www.pii.org.uk and www.dti.gov.uk/construction
Measuring
Progress & Reporting
Building
a Better Quality of Life highlights
the importance of measuring progress in achieving greater
sustainability.
National
Indicators
The
government published its annual report, Achieving
a Better Quality of Life, reviewing progress in achieving
sustainable development (January 2001) where (in chapter 3)
it outlines the 15 ‘headline indicators’ for sustainability.
Of these, three are directly relevant to the environmental
impacts of construction:
- H10:
Air Quality
- H13:
Wildlife
- H15:
Waste
In
addition to the headline indicators, there is a more detailed
subset of 150 measures, four of which are relevant to the
construction industry:
- construction
and demolition waste going to landfill
- primary
aggregates used per unit of construction value
- amount
of secondary/recycled aggregates used compared to virgin
aggregate
- CO2
emissions by end user
The
full document (including the available results for these indicators)
can be found at www.sustainable-development.gov.uk
Industry-level
Indicators
Building
a better quality of life committed
the government to tracking progress of sustainable construction
through a suite of ten ‘key performance indicators’ (KPIs).
Construction
Key Performance Indicator Pack 2000
The third set of the annually published
Key Performance Indicators for the Construction Industry
(July 2001), was developed by the industry-wide KPI project
management group chaired by DTI. It contains seven wall charts
showing the range of performance currently being achieved
across the construction industry for the 10 headline KPIs
and a handbook describing how they can be used. It also contains
an Industry Progress Report. See www.cbpp.org.uk for more information.
The
Construction Industry Board (CIB) took the lead in developing
industry-level sustainable construction indicators. It aimed
to collect performance data for the whole construction industry.
The Sustainable Construction Task Group, chaired by Sir Martin
Laing, now leads in continuing to develop these indicators.
Other
KPIs
The
construction benchmarking gateway website - run by the CBPP
at www.kpizone.com - is a single point of entry
providing users with access to all the issues, tools, events
and information relating to benchmarking that are available
to the construction industry.
Company-level Indicators
There is considerable research underway
to develop company-level KPIs. For example, CIRIA has undertaken
the research project Sustainable
construction targets and indicators with funding from
the DTI’s PII scheme. CIRIA has worked with industry to identify
a suite of targets and indicators appropriate to construction
companies. The project’s final report Sustainable construction: company indicators
was published in August 2001. It details the benefits of benchmarking
and lays out an action plan for companies wishing to develop
their own indicators.
CIRIA
is also currently undertaking research to develop performance
measures for design. The aim of the current phase of work
is to develop a set of generic performance indicators for
design activities; to benchmark performance of participating
organisations; and to make recommendations for improved performance.
The toolkit has been benchmarked against the performance of
a test group and enhanced, and is recognised as a valuable
instrument for measuring performance.
The
Construction Products Association is the contractor for a
new PII project, Sustainability KPIs for material producers,
which aims to extend the scope of existing Construction Product
Association KPIs to include a wider range of indicators, mainly
covering the more sophisticated issues of sustainability,
and health and safety. It will progress the existing system
of measurement and benchmarking, which currently focuses on
customer satsifaction, into the broader scope of sustainability,
by covering economic, social and environmental impacts. Thus
it will develop construction product KPIs and and promote
them to the whole construction industry; and use these KPIs
for data collection, analysis and benchmarking. By doing so,
it will objectively demonstrate continuous improvement, best
value and value for money; identify and eliminate areas of
waste; measure and compare against peers; and establish best
practice.
For
further details see www.ciria.org.uk
and www.constprod.org.uk
Project-level
Indicators
The
Rethinking Construction demonstration projects are required
to measure their performance against the published Construction
Industry KPIs for client satisfaction, construction cost and
time, predictability, defects, safety, productivity and profitability.
The first set of results was published at the M4I conference
(May 2000), the second set of results is included in the Industry
Progress report contained in the Construction
Industry KPI Pack 2000.
Measuring
individual projects’ sustainability is key to measuring progress
towards sustainable construction. M4I is leading on promoting
project performance improvement for private-sector non-housing
construction. It has established a respect for people working
group and a sustainability working group. Both groups have
recently developed indicators. A
commitment to people, our biggest asset looks at respect
for people issues (November 2000). Environmental
Performance Indicators for Sustainable Construction (September
2001) outlines six indicators designed to be a starting point
for industry by measuring its environmental sustainability
credentials project by project. These indicators represent
a means of setting an appropriate number of targets across
the most common building types that can be used from inception
of the project to completion and beyond.
See
www.m4i.org.uk
Sector-level
Indicators
The development
of suites of indicators for different sub-sectors of the construction
industry allows performances to be compared and areas of concern
to be identified. For instance, BSRIA is developing indicators
for buildings in use, and the Royal Institute of British Architects
(RIBA) is producing a suite of design quality indicators.
In June 2001, RIBA, the Association of Consulting Engineers,
the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and the Institution
of Civil Engineers came together to publish the 2000 Construction Consultants KPIs.
See
www.bsria.co.uk, www.architecture.com, and www.acenet.co.uk
Reporting
There
has been growing on pressure on companies - from both Government
and the Market - to report on their environmental impacts.
Government
Encouragement
The Prime
Minister challenged (October 2000) the top 350 companies to
report to common standards on their three main environmental
impacts (energy use, waste and water use) by the end of 2001.
Stephen Byers, whilst Secretary of State for Trade and Industry,
and Michael Meacher, the Environment Minister, echoed this.
DEFRA will be producing general guidelines on environmental
reporting shortly, to support those on energy, waste and water
use.
The focus
is not just on the very largest companies: the government
re-launched its Make
a Corporate Commitment campaign (June 2000) to encourage
target setting and subsequent reporting of performance to
reduce CO2, waste, water and other aspects of business
environmental performance amongst all companies with more
than 250 employees. See www.macc2.org.uk
In
July 2000 new pensions regulations came into effect requiring
occupational pension funds to state the extent to which they
take social, ethical and environmental considerations into account
in making their investment decisions. This is generating increased
interest in company environmental and social disclosure, thus
increasing market pressure on companies to report. See www.dss.gov.uk/publications
The
Turnbull Report
The
subject of business risk - including that arising from social,
environmental and sustainable development issues - was raised
in the Turnbull report on corporate governance (published
September 1999). Compliance with Turnbull will require a company’s
board of directors to consider issues such as whether there
are specific arrangements for management monitoring, and reporting
to the board on risk and control matters of particular importance.
This might, for example, include matters that could adversely
effect the company’s reputation or financial position.
Other
Recommendations The
independent Company Law Review final report (July 2001) recommends that companies
make environmental disclosures in their reports and accounts,
where these are pertinent to the company. See www.dti.gov.uk/cld/review.htm
The European
Commission issued a similar recommendation (May 2001; see
the Official Journal of the European Commission:
L 156/33) on the recognition, measurement and disclosure of
environmental issues in the annual accounts and annual reports
of companies. It also recommends that environmental issues
should be disclosed to the extent that they are material to
the financial performance or financial position of the reporting
entity. These include environmental policies, programmes
and improvement. Information on environmental performance
includes energy use, water use, material use, emissions and
waste disposals.
The
Market The
market has responded to developments in government policy
and changing stakeholder needs through the development of
ethical indices (such as the FTSE4Good) which aim to rank companies
according to their environmental and social performance. The
ranking score can influence investors, particularly for those
who want to invest ‘ethically’ (including institutional ethical
investors) and for those concerned with environmental liabilities.
The construction
industry has begun to respond to this new corporate environment:
Carillion plc won the award for best first-time reporter at
the tenth anniversary of the ACCA UK Environmental reporting
awards in 2000, and while less than half of the 20 or so construction
companies in the FTSE 350 produce a report at present, at
least 4 more have promised to do so. A number of others have
shown an awareness of their environmental impact, by, for
example, producing and publishing their environmental policy.
Forward
Look
Although
much work is being done at different levels of the industry
to implement the objectives of sustainable construction policy,
there are other specific measures which are in hand for further
development work in order to assist implementation by industry.
These
areas of work include:
- the
provision of an infrastructure for sourcing materials to
support the wider use of recycled and reclaimed materials
- strategies
to encourage evaluation of building performance and occupancy
reviews
- evaluation
of the Respect for
People toolkits currently being trialled
- developing
a research agenda on the respect for people dimensions of
policy
- publication
of key performance indicators to assist industry in setting
benchmarks and continuous improvement.
Some
Useful Links
Association
of Environment Conscious Building (AECB)
www.aecb.net
Building
Research Establishment (BRE)
www.bre.co.uk
Construction
Confederation
www.constructionconfederation.co.uk
Confederation
of Construction Clients (CCC)
www.clientsuccess.org
Construction
Industry Training Board (CITB)
www.citb.co.uk
Construction
Research and Innovation Strategic Panel (CRISP)
www.crisp-uk.org.uk
Construction
Task Force
See www.construction.detr.gov.uk
and www.m4i.org.uk
Government
Construction Clients Panel (GCCP)
See www.ogc.gov.uk
Royal
Institute of British Architects (RIBA)
www.architecture.com
Published
12 October 2001
index
