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Integrating the principles of sustainability into design gives us the opportunity to minimise the environmental and social impacts of a built structure from its conception and throughout its life cycle. Carillion recognises it is vital that we design for sustainability:
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The operational life of buildings accounts for around 50% of total UK energy consumption.
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The construction process accounts for less than 0.1%.
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The operational stage of a building accounts for 80% of the life cycle impacts from raw materials to demolition/recycling.
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During the design stages of our PFI (Private Finance Initiative) projects we work with our architects to produce more sustainable solutions. We capture the best practice and lessons learnt from past projects, notably the highly commended Great Western Hospital, feed this back into the design process and foster commitment at a project level to drive change and continuous improvement. Sustainability Working Groups are established on projects to continue to drive this and move the Sustainability Action Plan forward, which is formed at the design stage with our architects.
Some examples of our sustainable design practices over the past year are detailed below:
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The New Accommodation Project was completed in July 2003 and incorporated natural light, a high quality air supply, and insulation for winter and shading for summer. An energy efficient method of keeping the building cool using chilled beams was installed.
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Local materials such as Cotswold stone were chosen and prefabrication used to integrate a variety of components such as services, glazing and concrete elements.
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The University of Hertfordshire Residential project was completed towards the end of 2003, designed to be one of the most energy efficient student residences in the UK. Details of our achievements can be found on the University website.
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Much work was done during the design stages for the project to integrate sustainable design and thinking, which was carried through to the construction stage by the Site Sustainability Working Group.
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A Sustainability Action Plan was established, setting project targets covering waste, materials, energy consumption, people, biodiversity and community involvement.
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Sustainability Cost Accounting and target reports will provide useful benchmarking information for future projects.
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At Oxford John Radcliffe Hospital the Sustainability Working Group includes members from the Great Western Hospital project and the University of Hertfordshire project, and are developing the Sustainability Action Plan based on the previous best practice.
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The project is using a newly developed system of sustainability KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) based upon our experience from previous projects and is integrated with our monthly management reports.
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We can demonstrate our improvement in sustainable design in our Health sector through our increasing score in the NHS Environmental Assessment Tool (NEAT), where greater than 70% is regarded as excellent, for our three most recently designed PFI hospitals:
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Years
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Total NEAT Score (%)
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Great Western Hospital, Swindon
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1998 - 2002
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N/A
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John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford
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2002
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75%
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Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth
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2003
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82%
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Above: Improvements in NEAT Score through Design for Healthcare Projects
The fact that the Great Western Hospital, Swindon is an example of UK best practice and at the time did not have a NEAT assessment shows improvement to be obtaining excellent performance for the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford and even better performance for the Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth.
In 2003 targets were set for design as part of our operational IMS shared service targets.
More design case records:
• GCHQ Sustainability Initiatives
• Prefabrication at University of Hertfordshire
For all of our best practice case records since 2001, please click here. |
