Sustainability

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…

Andy Murdoch is a partner at engineering, design and advisory practice Buro Happold The announcement on 30 July by the chancellor Rachel Reeves to cancel several major highway projects and conduct a wider review of ‘unfunded projects’ has had a significant, unexpected impact on road users, local communities and the…

Anya Blanchfield is a sustainability engineer and net-zero consultant at property and construction consultancy McBains, and a BREEAM Assessor, working on decarbonisation assessments of existing buildings The 500,000 buildings on the National Heritage List for England are a vital part of our nation’s cultural heritage. One of the most important…

Hannah Tsurkan is the founder of construction project management company Agora Project Management   As the UK pushes towards its ambitious 2050 net-zero target, the construction and demolition industry stands at a critical juncture. Despite significant progress being made, our sector contributes 60 per cent of all waste in the UK,…

Matt Tallon is sustainability director at FM Conway The idea of circularity is gaining ground in construction and in business generally but, sadly, talk isn’t always translating into action. The Circle Economy Foundation’s 2024 Circularity Gap Report shows that the world is actually going backwards on resource conservation and reuse.…