Brunel slides for ICE web site

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3rd Brunel International Lecture Delivering
Sustainable Development Gold Coast, 3 October
2001, Brisbane, 3 October 2001 Sydney, 8 October
2001, Melbourne, 11 October 2001 Auckland, 10
October 2001
Roger Venables Managing Director, Crane
Environmental Ltd, and Chairman of the
Institution of Civil Engineers Environment
Sustainability Board
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Delivering sustainable development

• 11 September 2001

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Delivering sustainable development

• Overall coverage
• What do we mean by sustainable development
• Civil engineering in the context of sustainable
  development
• What we know about sustainable development
• Some of the challenges and issues that it
  presents to us
• A small selection of initiatives and activities
  that are moving us forward in the UK
• How to make sustainable development normal
• How to move practice forward

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Delivering sustainable development

• Forum for the Future definition
• Sustainable development is a process, which
  enables all people to realise their potential and
  improve their quality of life in ways that
  simultaneously protect and enhance the Earths
  life support systems.

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Delivering sustainable development

• Thus a distinction needs to be made between a
  sustainable society or sustainable living
  as the goal and
• sustainable development
• as the process that will get us there
• However, sustainable development is also used as
  a term about built development
• In the UK, sustainable construction is used

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Delivering sustainable development

• So, in this lecture I mean delivering
• built development that sustains life and improves
  the quality of life for human beings
• work that removes the environmental or social
  damage from the past
• work to improve the sustainability of the wider
  environment and ecosystems
• plus, development in the context of the personal
  development of individuals and of societal
  quality of life
• all within Planet Earths carrying capacity

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Delivering sustainable development

• The most-commonly-asked question
• What should I do differently?
• This requires us to identify sustainable practice
• So, Can we recognise a sustainable development
  when we see one?

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Delivering sustainable development

• So, what is it that makes for sustainable
  development? Is it
• Where it is land use, ecological impact?
• What it is materials choice and use,
  aesthetics?
• How it was built construction impacts?
• How it performs joy in use, energy and water
  efficiency, durability, flexibility, financial
  success?
• Lets continue to explore what we mean by
  Delivering Sustainable Development.

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Delivering sustainable development

• A challenge
• Any 21st century professional engineer who is
  ignorant of, or ignores, sustainability, who does
  not seek to deliver more-sustainable solutions,
  and who does not also seek to live more
  sustainably, will be an incomplete engineer.
• True or false?

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Delivering sustainable development

• Six central contentions
• Sustainable development needs an immense
  contribution from engineers and engineering.
• Sustainable Development needs engineers to work
  with the many others involved to do that well,
  with an open mind. No one discipline or
  individual knows best.
• The best engineering and construction is,
  perhaps, already or almost good enough.

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Delivering sustainable development

• A very great deal still needs to be done to make
  sustainable development normal.
• Fuzziness in the definitions of sustainable
  development is no excuse for doing nothing
  practical action is possible now by everyone.
  Accept that perfection is not attainable do not
  agonise about it.
• Engineers generally must take a lead and play
  their full part.
• It is an inspiring area of work.

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Delivering sustainable development

• Two important provisos
• Lecture complementary to Special Issue of ICEs
  Journal Civil Engineering, Nov. 2000
  Sustainable development Making it happen
• Not discussing climate change, nor other major
  related political issues such as the call for
  population control just two of many drivers for
  sustainable development

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Delivering sustainable development

• Civil engineering and sustainable development
• A water supply project a balance between use of
  natural resources and social and economic
  benefits brought to people
• But concern on particular projects about
• disruption to natural processes
• scale of the infrastructure demand-led
• adverse impact on some for the benefit of others
• Need for the right balance

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Delivering sustainable development

• The right balance has not always been achieved
  in the past
• We have mastered the art of directing the great
  sources of nature for the use and convenience of
  man
• BUT
• We have done and may still do it in disharmony
  with the environment and with some of our fellow
  citizens

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Delivering sustainable development

• How well did we do in the past?

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Delivering sustainable development

• Mid-1800s one of civil engineerings most
  important contribution was improvement of public
  health
• Joseph Bazelgettes interceptor sewers in London
  are still in use today
• Now over 100 species of fish are back in the
  River Thames

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Delivering sustainable development

• Transport infrastructure
• Marc Brunels Thames Tunnel lasted well over a
  century before major refurbishment was needed
• Isombard Kingdom Brunels Great Western Railway
  from London to Bristol (completed in 1841) still
  in use today

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Delivering sustainable development

• These examples pass the high quality design test,
  for example in durability and flexibility
• and railways are now considered a green form
  of transport
• Yet they are rarely economically successful over
  the long term, and
• 19th Century Railway bills subjected to strong
  opposition at all stages of their promotion

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Delivering sustainable development

• Use of materials
• Timber viaducts became uneconomic when Baltic
  timbers were no longer available
• No record of Brunel or GWR planting new trees to
  re-grow stock used for their bridges
• Brunels management style left much to be
  desired compared to present best practice

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Delivering sustainable development

• So, is the GWR an example of sustainable civil
  engineering or not?
• You be the judge!

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Delivering sustainable development

• So, what do we know already about sustainable
  development? in addition to whats been
  covered already

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Delivering sustainable development

• UK Governments Sustainable Development Strategy
  defines it as
• social progress which meets the needs of everyone
• effective protection of the environment
• prudent use of natural resources
• maintenance of high and stable levels of economic
  growth and employment

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Economic Success
Sustainable Development
High Environmental Quality
Social Success
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Economic Success
Severe environmental damage
Social disquiet or unrest
Sustainable Development
High Environmental Quality
Social Success
Does not proceed, or economic loss
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Economic Success
Un-sustainable project
High Environmental Quality
Social Success
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Economic Success
Un-sustainable project
High Environmental Quality
Social Success
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Economic Success
Un-sustainable project
High Environmental Quality
Social Success
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Delivering sustainable development

• What do we know about delivering sustainable
  development?

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Delivering sustainable development

• Delivery of sustainable development must be
  across all sectors of society and
• We can sub-divide its delivery many ways, into
• sustainable construction
• sustainable manufacturing industry
• sustainable farming
• sustainable forestry
• sustainable tourism
• becoming
• sustainable living

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Delivering sustainable development

• In short
• Sustainable Development is development that
  enables Sustainable Living
• Delivering sustainable development will enable us
  all to live more and more sustainably

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Delivering sustainable development

• What do we know about delivering sustainable
  development?
• Challenge is a huge one but we can tackle it
• For many years, engineering has been trying to
  take into account the issues contained in the
  sustainable development concept
• We and our clients have taken insufficient
  account of the impact of the works of civil
  engineering and building on the environment and
  society
• We have paid too little attention to resource
  efficiency.

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Delivering sustainable development

• What do we know about delivering sustainable
  development?
• However
• We have learnt a great deal over the last few
  years about how to avoid inadequacies of much of
  past practice.
• We now know a great deal about what actions to
  take to deliver, at worst, a less-unsustainable
  future and, at best, what we really can call a
  sustainable future

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Delivering sustainable development

• What may be new?
• The idea that projects need to be in harmony with
  society as a whole, not just with select groups
• A whole-life approach whole-life costing and
  whole-life environmental assessment

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Delivering sustainable development

• Issues and challenges to resolve
• ICE web site will provide a venue for
  discussion of how to respond to these challenges

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Delivering sustainable development

• Issues and challenges to resolve
• Recognition Often in the detail

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Delivering sustainable development

• Issues and challenges to resolve
• Recognition
• The resource efficiency challenge
• A great need
• Factor 10
• A few are demonstrating dramatic changes

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Delivering sustainable development

• Issues and challenges to resolve
• Recognition
• The resource efficiency challenge
• Social acceptability
• Disconnection between individuals action and
  environmental impact so they ask Why do I
  have to change?
• Who decides on the greater good
• Who decides who decides
• Dealing with conflicting single-issue groups

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Delivering sustainable development

• Issues and challenges to resolve
• Recognition
• The resource efficiency challenge
• Social acceptability
• Assessment of impacts
• How far afield do we look for impacts ve and
  ve?
• Local?
• Regional?
• State?
• World?

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Delivering sustainable development

• Issues and challenges to resolve
• Recognition
• The resource efficiency challenge
• Social acceptability
• Assessment of impacts
• Timescales
• How far into the future do we assess?
• Were bad at futurology!
• Do ones best on basis of current knowledge
• eg long life, loose fit, low energy

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Delivering sustainable development

• Issues and challenges to resolve
• Recognition
• The resource efficiency challenge
• Social acceptability
• Assessment of impacts
• Timescales
• The perception that sustainable development is
  only for the rich
• Its not! its a myth that it costs extra
• Sustainable development is crucial to alleviating
  poverty

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Delivering sustainable development

• Issues and challenges to resolve
• Recognition
• The resource efficiency challenge
• Social acceptability
• Assessment of impacts
• Timescales
• The perception that sustainable development is
  only for the rich
• Valuing the environment
• Competing views
• Payment vs compensation

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Delivering sustainable development

• Issues and challenges to resolve
• Recognition
• The resource efficiency challenge
• Social acceptability
• Assessment of impacts
• Timescales
• The perception that sustainable development is
  only for the rich
• Valuing the environment
• Human values and the environment We make value
  judgements about good and bad

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Delivering sustainable development

• Important to recognise that
• What we call natural environment has been
  greatly influenced by human activity
• Are nature conservation and protection or
  enhancement of the environment about
• wild places that have not yet been influenced
  directly by human activity
• OR
• the green environment that looks and behaves as
  it does because of past and/or current human
  activity?
• We are making value judgements about what is
  good, bad and natural

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Delivering sustainable development

• UK Projects and Initiatives to help move us
  forward

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Delivering sustainable development

• Maidenhead flood relief scheme
• Design to very high environmental standards
  first Edmund Hambly Memorial ICE prize
• Will appear to be a natural river
• Costing 98M, yet cost-effective
• Now sustaining life in Maidenhead by
  significantly reducing the risk of flooding
• Yet it should not have been necessary if a
  different approach to flood plain development had
  been adopted

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Delivering sustainable development

• The Institution of Civil Engineers
• Overall policy
• Position Statements
• Good (Sustainability) Practice Case Sheets
• CEEQUAL an environmental assessment and awards
  scheme ? BREEAM
• Sector Sustainability Strategy
• ICE, IEAust and IPENZ are all pushing good
  practice

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Delivering sustainable development

• Princess Margaret Hospital, Swindon
• Led by Carillion plc flagship project
• Help from The Natural Step
• Aim is green credentials second to none
• Waste management
• Materials choice, sourcing and supplier support
• Plant choices and energy-efficient features of
  the design
• Transport plans
• Wildlife and habitat management

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Delivering sustainable development

• Waste at Princess Margaret Hospital, Swindon
• Original estimate of waste generated from
  construction 5000 tonnes
• Design eliminated half of that
• Construction maximum 14 waste streams for
  recycling, only one to landfill
• About 250 tonnes to landfill so far
• Factor 10 outcome in sight
• Funding regime prompted long-term view

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Delivering sustainable development

• UK Governments Construction Clients Panel
• Plan Achieving sustainability in construction
  procurement
• Government action to implement its own policies
• From Defence Estates to Environment Agency (for
  flood defence), Highways Agency to the Prison
  Service, Schools to NHS all are involved
• Potentially very significant driver for change

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Delivering sustainable development

• Waste minimisation and Recycling
• Many initiatives for both
• Clearest financial benefit from a sustainability
  sideways look at construction
• Much progress being made in many companies
• Still difficulties with markets for some
  secondary materials
• Despite that, much can be done now

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Delivering sustainable development

• Construction Industry Environmental Forum
• Major influence on leading industry players
• 10th birthday in 2001
• Now firmly addressing the sustainability issues
  of the industry, having started on only the
  environmental issues

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Delivering sustainable development

• Other important UK initiatives
• Movement for Innovation demo projects
• BRE Centre for Sustainable Construction
• HR Wallingford
• TRL
• Engineers for the 21st Century Enquiry
• Professional Partnerships for Sustainable
  Development
• Steel Construction Institute
• Forum for the Future

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Delivering sustainable development

• How do we make sustainable development the normal
  way of development

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Delivering sustainable development
Product Diffusion Curve
Sales
Time
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Delivering sustainable development

• Who buys a product when, and why?
• 2.5 - (wacky) innovators
• 13.5 - Mr Mrs Jones (the opinion formers
  or early adopters)
• 34 - those who keep up with Mr Mrs Jones
  (the early majority)
• 34 - the alright-if-the-price-is-OK late
  majority
• 16 - the alright-if-I-have-to laggards

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Delivering sustainable development

• If we think of
• environmental management of construction
• sustainable construction and
• sustainable development
• as if they were products
• where are they on the product diffusion curve?

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Delivering sustainable development
Awareness?
Sustainable development
Environmental management of construction in the UK
Awareness?
Practice?
Sustainable construction in the UK
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Delivering sustainable development

• Is sustainable development a product yet?
• Is it in production?
• Awareness of the concept may even be in the late
  majority group, yet the practice of sustainable
  development is extremely limited

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Delivering sustainable development

• Sustainable development characterised as
• Design principles known to only a few
  manufacturers
• Test-manufactured by a few of them
• Test-marketed, for example, in a few housing
  developments
• Yet elements of the concept are practised more
  widely than the overall concept

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Delivering sustainable development

• If sustainable development were a product
• If we were the marketing department of its owners
  
• How would we move Sustainable Development from
• its small, niche market to
• being as ubiquitous as Coca Cola is as a drink?

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Delivering sustainable development

• We would
• Identify the next most-likely set of buyers
• Identify the benefits
• Study why our next target market group buy, how
  they buy, how they make buying decisions, what
  advertising messages they respond to
• Identify and deliver our production and delivery
  methods, and marketing messages
• Move on to consider the same questions for the
  next target group

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Delivering sustainable development

• Can we do this for Sustainable Development?
• We all professionals involved in development
  must do so
• The benefits have already been identified (and
  publicised in a range of publications)
• We know who must buy it next clients
• CHOGMs attention on the key issues would have
  helped with publicity
• The Earth Summit 2002 in Johannesburg will
  certainly help because of media attention

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Delivering sustainable development

• Marketing sustainable development
• We you and I can become the marketing
  department and the sales force for sustainable
  development
• We can demonstrate the concept by example in
  whatever way our work and personal lives allow
• We can persuade our clients, our governments, our
  friends opinion formers to do likewise

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Delivering sustainable development

• Practical actions needed

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Delivering sustainable development

• The ICEs Sector Strategy Working Party is
  developing lists of actions for five groups
• Clients
• Civil engineering commercial concerns
• designers, contractors, suppliers
• Professional and trade groups
• Governments as regulators and policy developers
• Individuals
• Some examples in a UK context

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Delivering sustainable development

• Practical actions to take
• Re-use and improve existing built assets
• Locate new development appropriately
• Relate land-use planning to transport other
  infrastructure
• Design for minimum waste and effective use of
  resources
• Choose an appropriate design life flexible and
  durable, or for dis-assembly re-use elsewhere
• Minimise energy consumption

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Delivering sustainable development

• Practical actions to take
• Utilise renewable energy sources where
  appropriate
• Do not pollute the wider environment
• Preserve and enhance natural features and
  (appropriate) biodiversity
• Conserve water resources, not all demand-led
• Respect people and their local environment, and
  seek to minimise the adverse social impacts and
  maximise the positive social impacts of our
  projects

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Delivering sustainable development

• Scale of improvement
• We need small improvements replicated everywhere
• alongside
• large improvements achieved on occasional
  large-scale projects

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Delivering sustainable development

• Overall, we should be aiming to create
  appropriate civil engineering works or buildings
• in the right place
• with a sound choice of materials, and sources
• with high environmental performance (e.g. energy
  water consumption, maintainability)
• an appropriate design life
• in harmony with their surroundings and neighbours
• so that, asap, this way becomes our norm.

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Delivering sustainable development

• Acknowledgements

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Delivering sustainable development

• How do we move practice forward?
• Adopt a whole life approach using life-cycle
  analysis not just life-cycle costing but
  life-cycle environmental analysis as well
• Undertake a Sustainability Impact Assessment
  instead of just an Environmental Impact
  assessment project starting soon at Heriot Watt
  University, Edinburgh
• Use the Business Case for Sustainable Development
  to persuade our clients to adopt new approaches
  to their development projects

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Delivering sustainable development

• How do we move practice forward?
• Use the extensive guidance already available
  from wherever on the planet we can find it
• Look for Factor 10 in all we do
• Waste dramatically less
• Use dramatically less energy and water
• Generate substantial improvements in social
  conditions
• Achieve obvious improvements in the natural and
  built environments

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Delivering sustainable development

• How do we move practice forward?
• Educators have a crucial role in sending civil
  engineering and other graduates in built and
  natural environment subjects out into the world
  understanding what sustainable development is and
  how deliver it

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Delivering sustainable development

• How do we move practice forward?
• Everyone needs
• an open mind and a willingness to learn from each
  other no one discipline knows best
• to consider sustainability in everything we do
• to waste less think Factor 10 to look for,
  and deliver, reductions in waste of resources in
  whatever we do in materials, energy and water
• to deal more respectfully, considerately yet
  effectively with all the people involved

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Delivering sustainable development

• How do we move practice forward?
• By creating
• appropriate engineering works or buildings
• with a sound choice of materials, and sources
• with high environmental performance
• an appropriate design life
• in harmony with their surroundings and neighbours

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Delivering sustainable development

• How do we move practice forward?
• By recognising this as a sustainable development
  project
• exciting
• beautiful
• highly efficient (and visibly so if possible)
• in harmony with its neighbours and surroundings
• a joy to be in or to experience

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Delivering sustainable development

• How do we move practice forward?
• Above all, we can consider sustainability in
  everything we do by asking this question
• Is what I am doing striking the right balance
  between environmental impact, social impact and
  economics?
• If not we know what we should do change!

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Delivering sustainable development

• Concluding remarks
• Finally, its the thinking thats important
• and the working together, and then the
  solutions will follow.
• If we give sustainable development our minds and
  our time, it will reward us in return, with
• social progress,
• economic success,
• and our planets health.

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Delivering sustainable development

• Web site for further information
• www.ice.org.uk
• then to Knowledge and expertise,
• Environment Sustainability
• Knowledge map
• Sustainability
• link to Brunel Lecture
• Will include links to other relevant sites