Sustainability

Winner: Zed Pods Our winner describes itself as “an environmentally led modular housing developer with a passion for creating 100 per cent affordable, net-zero-carbon housing solutions in difficult-to-develop, constrained sites like infills, flood zones, garages and hardstanding”. “A fantastic SME, punching above its weight and driving the net-zero carbon agenda…

Winner: TopHat – Low Carbon Homes TopHat said its White Road project for Medway Council represented a showcase of what can be delivered using offsite construction, with the project’s 20 homes accounting for less embodied carbon than one traditionally built home. Once occupied, each of the houses should deliver a…

Progress on protecting buildings from the impact of climate change is behind where it should be, and the need is only becoming more urgent. Greg Pitcher reports

James Bruce is a director at engineering consultancy Civic Engineers The joy of working on retrofit construction projects is that, more often than not, the buildings will throw up some unexpected surprises. Brownsfield Mill in Manchester provides a great example. This 1825 Grade II-listed brick Victorian cotton mill was the…

In July, Construction News held its second virtual conference on Decarbonising Construction. Ten months on from our inaugural event, a lot had changed. For one thing, there was a marked uptick in the number of speakers from large contractors, keen to talk about realistic roadmaps and timelines for reaching carbon…

The international consensus is clear: the time to radically slash carbon emissions is now. But is the industry doing enough? Joshua Stein reports

Mark Reynolds is chief executive of Mace You could be forgiven for feeling despondent, following the release of the latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC’s landmark study, signed off by 234 scientists from more than 60 countries, delivers a stark warning: it is…

Philippa Spence is UK managing director at engineering consultancy Ramboll As the late-October start date of the COP26 climate-change summit fast approaches, not since the 2015 Paris Agreement of COP21 has so much been riding on a meeting. This is the decade when the world must change course if we…

Graham Harle is chief executive officer of Gleeds Worldwide With COP26 just around the corner, and following the truly frightening report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sounding a “code red for humanity”, I increasingly find myself talking with colleagues, clients and friends about the climate crisis. Events…

Richard Baldwin is director of development at Derwent London How do we ‘build back better’? Or, in the case of construction, just ‘build better’? This issue has exercised the industry for years, not just since the pandemic. The challenges of ensuring sustainability, flexibility, and futureproofing all come into sharp focus,…