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More than 150 sustainability professionals joined an exclusive ISEP Corporate Partner webinar earlier this year to discuss the impact of climate change on the UK’s construction sector.
The event took place while the country was experiencing record levels of rainfall – with some areas seeing more than 50 straight days of rain – and these conditions are expected to become increasingly familiar in the years ahead.
Climate change is also driving hotter summers, coastal erosion and greater flood risks, all of which threaten infrastructure and are forcing the construction sector to rethink how it maintains and delivers future developments.
At the same time, the built environment accounts for approximately 25% to 40% of the UK’s total carbon emissions, giving it a critical role to play in mitigation and transitioning to more sustainable ways of operating.
Hannah Leggatt, director of environment and sustainability at The Clancy Group, and Will Bentley, environmental adviser at Morgan Sindall Infrastructure, reflected on the challenges and opportunities they face, as well as the innovations that are helping the construction sector to respond.
Hannah Leggatt: Climate change is rapidly reshaping how the construction sector operates. Heatwaves are disrupting productivity and increasing health risks, which means adjusted working hours but also looking at how materials like concrete and asphalt react. Intense rainfall has massive impacts, because it delays groundworks, can damage equipment, and means that we must design stronger drainage and resilience measures. In some cases, flooding has made sites unviable altogether. Coastal erosion is undermining shoreline infrastructure, so we have to look at different ways to invest in protective measures or relocate – finding suitable project sites is a lot harder.
Will Bentley: In the water sector where we’re working in South Wales and Wessex, we’re seeing a lot of direct impacts from heavy, persistent rainfall and increased discharges. Some areas are at very high risk of flooding – one of our sites is directly upstream from a village where the council has had to buy an entire row of houses, because flood defences are no longer economically viable. A lot of the infrastructure is ageing, and it’s not ready for these wetter winters with heavier peak flows. That has so many knock-on effects; we’re seeing an increased risk of pollution from silt, hydrocarbons and other waterborne substances.
Bentley: We’ve had to install some large-scale silt mitigation systems on some relatively small schemes, with fencing, bales, attenuation bonds, French drains, soakaways and things like gel flocculants, lamella settlement tanks and silt busters. We’ve looked at corporate initiatives based on peatland restoration, which give wider natural-capital benefits as well. We invested in a project called the Great North Bog in the North Pennines that’s restoring 300 hectares of upland blanket bog. Not only does that capture carbon but it also helps to slow the flow of water in upland areas and mitigate flooding downslope.
Leggatt: When we’re doing environmental assessments, we now need to incorporate long-term climate projections. We’re dealing with infrastructure that may not be ready for adaptation, so we must prioritise robust climate risk assessments. We also need resilient design, materials and working practices in extreme weather.
Leggatt: One of the biggest challenges is resource pressure. We’ve got increasing workloads, limited specialist capacity and varying subcontractor capabilities, so maintaining those consistent environmental standards across everything we do is challenging.
Major contractors are also struggling with recruitment, as there aren’t enough people to deliver the work planned over the next five years. Major projects like HS2, Sizewell C and Hinkley Point are placing massive demands on the same resource pool, so the skills gap is a significant challenge.
Bentley: There’s some great collaboration on show between subcontractors and within the supply chain – the main challenges we’ve encountered often come at the regulatory level. If there’s uncertainty over policies or different clients’ compliance requirements, that’s where issues with reporting start to come in. There are often discrepancies between carbon and waste reporting guidelines – policy standardisation is key. Another challenge may be resourcing dedicated carbon specialists, who are going to be more in demand within the sector.
Leggatt: At Clancy, our aim is a 30% reduction in scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030, and a net-zero target by 2050, with a stretch ambition that’s aligned to a lot of our clients. We wanted to set a target that was achievable. We’re confident we will achieve and probably exceed that. We introduced integrated carbon reduction plans for all our contracts, and rolled out carbon literacy training across the business, including our executive and senior leadership teams. For scope 1, 97% is related to fuel use, which is difficult to decarbonise because of current technology limitations. Around 90% of our company cars are now EVs and we have an EV-first policy. The challenge sits with the operational team, because we have a high dependence on fuel, and the charging infrastructure at the moment just isn’t there.
Bentley: The ambition is to be net zero for scope 1 and 2 and the operational scope 3 emissions by 2030, and net zero for all emissions by 2045. While companies are rightly championing EVs or PHEVs, there’s a challenge in getting sites electrified and on the grid. Fortunately, we’ve managed to do that on quite a few of our larger sites, so we can charge on site if needs be, but there are issues with availability and upfront costs. Hydrogen is also something to keep an eye on in the coming years.
Leggatt: Digital tools and data platforms. We have just tendered for our own carbon management system, which will be a gamechanger, because it will digitise everything we need to do. We’re also using drones more widely to survey hard-to-reach areas, reducing travel and emissions, and improving safety. We’ve introduced AI briefing characters to replace traditional methods on site. The success has been phenomenal – it’s much more engaging and effective for our operatives. We need to move faster on PAS 2080, ISO 14064 and low-carbon materials to help push that consistency. We need greater collaboration and less competition; whether that’s through shared learning, joint trials or adopting new ways of working.
Bentley: The standard of carbon management and reduction tools has improved massively over the past five years or so. Whole-life carbon assessments are a key factor to reduce embodied carbon in construction, as detailed in PAS 2080. We’ve developed our own, called CarboniCa – it’s a whole-life carbon reduction tool that provides a full breakdown of emissions by scope 1, 2 and 3, and is completed in-house, which is more cost- and time-efficient. The overall uptake of sustainable concepts in construction has exploded in the past few years. Seeing businesses embrace innovations and opportunities shows there’s been a real shift in attitude, which is so encouraging.
Hannah Leggatt MIEnvSc is director of environment and sustainability at The Clancy Group.
Will Bentley PISEP is an environmental adviser at Morgan Sindall Infrastructure (MSI) in its water, aviation and highways unit.
Educate & Elevate is a webinar series, exclusive to our corporate partners. Want to get involved? Visit www.isepglobal.org/corporate-programmes/ or email corporate@isepglobal.org
