Could Sustainability Benefit From Health & Safety Lessons Learned?

In an article I wrote recently, I looked at some of the issues around trying to assess the carbon impact of security systems, both from the embodied and operational perspectives, and demonstrated that it isn’t the systems themselves that are the problem but the context within which they are designed, built and operated.

That sounds a bit obtuse. What am I actually saying?

Let’s make it clear.

1. If you’re in a country that makes dirty power then twiddling with the design of your security solution is going to have barely any impact on the carbon outcomes, and although it might be well-intentioned, your effort can be better focused on item 2 below.
2. If you run a rickety ship, with inefficient supply chain and installation project management practices, and don’t design your systems to minimize the operating and maintenance requirements throughout their life then all of the effort you put into making a carbon efficient design is cancelled out by the energy used in the logistics of supporting and operating the system, doubly so if you also fall under the conditions of item 1 above.

Of course, you can introduce a bunch of design standards that will point out how important it is that you recognize the benefits of efficiency, but in the absence of actual controls nothing really happens when the guys and gals in the hard hats get into the mix.

What’s needed is a system that requires project planning to include method statements that not only define and assess the carbon impact of the solution components, but also describes the way in which they are going to be implemented and how the system is going to be operated from end to end.

Assessment of carbon risk mitigation strategies need to be made for the whole lifecycle of the building, and systems of accountability need to be put in place that don’t just tick a box or record an aspiration, but actually make somebody responsible for ensuring contractors do what they say they are going to do and are penalised for straying away from those commitments. The carbon management design intent must be carried forward into the operating manuals of the tenant organisations that will operate and maintain the buildings once they are built, and somehow, this all needs to become an intrinsic part of the culture of the industry.

Right now we congratulate our design teams for their efforts and skew the competitiveness of the market by forcing vendors to pay for accreditation, but with the excessive focus on often meaningless certification schemes, an underlying lack of understanding of the points listed in (1) and (2) above, and no effective system of policing or enforcement, nothing real happens.

For me, this is reminiscent of the situation in the Health & Safety arena before the introduction of CDM in the UK. Before that, you might get some fine words included in a company brochure about how important a safe worksite was to the management, but people were still falling off ladders and getting buried in collapsing earthworks every day. The intention with CDM was this would be fixed by making people accountable and putting a level of standardised procedures around execution and management of works that ought to make accidents less likely and put in place systems to ensure they were dealt with properly when they did occur.

Now…like every good plan, it didn’t quite work as it was intended. In the early days, the pressure on small contractors was immense, and it could be argued that a lot of people just found ways to work around the rules and continue getting away with (what you might consider) murder. But there was a difference - more than just the introduction of the CDM Coordinator as the bloke to avoid on site - with people at last having to consider not just what they did but how they would do it as well.

Method statements and risk assessments forced people to think, and gave their memories the necessary jog to load the right equipment into the van at the start of the day, rather than driving back and forth to the depot half a dozen times to collect the tools, materials (and PPE) that they needed to do their work.

This is the kind of thinking that's now needed to address the real issues of achieving a measurably controlled impact from a carbon-focused design process, as long as a system of accountability can also be introduced, much as was intended with CDM.

It would be even better if sites as a whole could be better coordinated by somebody, consolidating material movements and sharing resources better. Does everyone have to send an apprentice down to Greggs at lunchtime...? Okay, maybe they do need the exercise, and perhaps it is important to their training that they pick up a long wait and a bucket of steam on the way back...

If we don’t start thinking about how we’re doing what we do then an awful lot of misguided and frankly worthless effort is going to go into designing for low carbon only to watch those efforts wiped out by the wastefulness of the common working practices still prevalent on the majority of construction sites, not just in dear old Blighty, but all over the world too.

The current systems are like having people go to driving school and learn the rules of the road, then allowing them out on the streets without any speed cameras, traffic wardens or flashing blue lights in the rear view mirror.?

It has to change.