Sustainability

Tim Clement is director of social value and sustainability at Morgan Sindall Construction We are standing on the cusp of transformation, with shifts already happening because of our ageing population, strained social infrastructure, Brexit realignment and the rise of artificial intelligence, with all the automation it will bring. Any transformation…

Jon Bootland is chief executive of the Passivhaus Trust Projects being built to the Passivhaus standard now account for approximately 1 per cent of all new homes under construction, according to figures the Passivhaus Trust has just released. This new data shows that the standard is now a mainstream option…

Has the industry or the environment felt any benefit from rules requiring contractors to report on their carbon footprints? CN analysis shows the regime is being undermined by a lack of consistency on what is being reported. Devon-based contractor and furniture supplier TCi spent years developing the sustainable side of…

Alex Jahanshahi-Edlin is an associate director of McBains and a member of the UK Green Building Council The government’s newly announced intention to create a strategic “spatial plan” for the UK’s energy transition is welcome, but it needs to include a sufficient expansion of the National Grid to support build…

Tristan Hughes is business unit manager at water-services company OSSO There has been little discussion of how to manage the environmental risks posed by the unprecedented expansion of power grids envisaged in the UK. Long-distance, high-voltage transmission grids are set to connect cities to remotely located renewable power sources. However,…

Kieran Bradley is director of architecture at consultancy Pick Everard As a society, much is made of our ability to repurpose where possible. Buildings are no different, and in recent years we’ve come a long way in making our construction choices more net-zero ambitious. Now, Labour is pledging to build…

Marc Perry (pictured above left) is principal geoenvironmental engineer and Tom Henman is sustainability director at RSK Geosciences Soil is an undervalued and finite resource. At government level, its importance is somewhat understood and recognised alongside the benefits of carbon reduction, waste reduction and the delivery of biodiversity net gain…

Retrofit might not be new, but it’s going through a purple patch due to net zero concerns. CN asks how contractors are mitigating the risks on cut-and-carve projects It’s a bright summer’s day and Bam Construction is busy installing period furniture at a striking 1960s central London modernist office block…

Liam Spencer is co-founder of Anomaly Architects Over the past few years, the retrofit movement has grown arms and legs. A term that was once reserved for a fairly niche group of design and project teams now spans wide across the industry and beyond to a public audience. We have…

Regulatory changes are driving developers to look more closely at material reuse rather than disposal, but old habits are hard to break, finds Kristina Smith Almost overnight, as the world emerged from Covid, Roy Fishwick noticed a change in attitudes towards reused steel. “Back in 2016, 2017, I was talking…