Some companies are exploring an industrial synergy with food production using low grade heat and heat pumps, but this is in early development..
We will come back to this as well..When achieved, this will benefit construction in a range of ways.. Firstly: it would provide greater market transparency and diversify the supply chain, meaning that companies of all sizes could engage with large-scale programmes, in the private and public sectors.. Secondly: late payment (particularly between contractors and their supply chains) has been a well-recognised problem in construction for a few decades.
It means smaller suppliers, to whom cashflow is critical, operate in a state of uncertainty and ‘financial distress’.Late payment is, unsurprisingly, one of the key triggers of insolvency..Even way back in 2013, the Government’s ‘Construction 2025’ vision proposed that construction should no longer be characterised by ‘late delivery, cost overruns, commercial friction, late payment’.
While this has been partly addressed through legislation such as the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 and the Prompt Payment Code, it is still a problem.. A digital marketplace would help make payments more timely – in some cases even instant.It would also make the construction procurement process more transparent and give suppliers greater certainty of cash flow.. Thirdly: procurement is another significant cause of ‘friction’ in projects, as noted in Construction 2025.
The process of arranging and issuing tender documentation and requests for proposals, scoring them and awarding contracts, is very time-consuming and labour-intensive.
Projects very often require a complex network of contracts to ensure that the main contract clauses are passed down through the supply chain, resulting in management overhead on overhead being passed back up to the client.. For these reasons, the Construction Playbook notes that:.It is important to flag that this trend favouring the reuse of buildings does not necessarily apply to every building.
The results will vary depending on the structural and architectural characteristics of the building and its life expectancy.. Whilst carbon emissions are a key point of decision when considering adaptive reuse, other factors, such as the resilience of the grid, the impact on fuel poverty and wellbeing, the adaptability of the building for a new use (for example converting offices to residential) need to be quantified and added into the discussion..Refurbishing buildings for a more sustainable future.
The Climate Emergency requires that we pay more attention to the refurbishment and reuse of existing buildings, with a focus on energy and carbon efficiency..The main benefit of the refurbishment of the urban fabric is a substantial saving in embodied carbon, but a new building can benefit from lower carbon emissions in operation.. Bryden Wood has carried out a detailed WLCA analysis of a light-tough refurbishment, full refurbishment and new construction for a commercial building based on benchmark from LETI and RIBA in order to understand which option is less carbon intensive after 60 years.