Contractors face sustainability postcode lottery
Construction industry reformer Sir Michael Latham has attacked the m&e sector’s record on sustainability.
Speaking at an industry summit, he said that a large number of m&e firms “don’t even regard it as a serious issue” despite their being a “revolution” in clients’ attitude.
John Moore, managing director of Balfour Kilpatrick, agreed saying: “The world is changing and contractors who do not pick up the sustainability issue will be left behind.
“Yet, there has been no quantum leap and there is still a problem in getting clients to make the big investment decisions to pay for sustainability. Many people still think this is something that can be left until later.”
However, he condemned the “postcode lottery” of local authority planning laws that left contractors completely confused about what sustainability targets they should be working towards.
“We have been subjected to 42 different targets by various local authorities. We must have consistency and more focused leadership on this issue – the Government can provide this through its role as a major client.”
He called on contractors to put their “own house in order” as sustainable employers by addressing the social, economic and lifestyle issues that affect their employees, such as reducing travel to work as much as possible.
“The definition of sustainability is: ‘keep something going over time or continuously’ and we have to ask ourselves if we can keep our industry going over time if we don’t address our recruitment problems.”
Less than 50% of JIB apprentices finish their courses and Mr Moore said he thought it was “questionable that we are building a sustainable industry” without doing more training.
“We also need to do more to attract women and to keep the operatives we already have,” he added.
Neil Pennell of Land Securities said clients had to plan for “totally integrated systems” in intelligent buildings if they were to have truly sustainable projects.
“We can’t afford to put in a new network every time we install a new system,” he said. “We want to put the infrastructure in once and then make sure everyone can link into that – this means we need to have the specialist team in early. This is how technology will make buildings more sustainable – speed up commissioning, reduce costs and provide flexibility for future use and management of the building.”
He also said sustainability went far further than energy efficiency.
“We need a good balance between energy efficiency and making sure the building is appropriate for use,” said Mr Pennell. “It may be rated from A to G for energy, but what about A to G for use? We don’t want to design buildings that no one wants to be in and we must avoid problems created by the oil crisis [in the 1970s] when we ended up with poorly ventilated buildings many of which have since had to be demolished.”
Land Securities is anticipating reduced use of standalone plant in the future plus increased deployment of desiccant cooling, biomass boilers, as well as air and ground source heat pumps.
“These higher chilled water temperatures from ground source favour the use of chilled ceilings and beams,” he added.
There was a strong call during the conference organised by Hilti for increased use of sub-metering so that end users could properly measure and monitor their energy use. However, one delegate warned that many users were not doing anything with the data they were gathering from meters.