Exemplar construction sites for air quality

Arup is delighted to be working in partnership with Impact on Urban Health to develop air quality mitigation solutions for the construction industry.

Air quality is a significant issue in urban areas and the construction industry has a role to play in helping to reduce total emissions. We will be focusing on both air quality impacts from construction sites on their neighboring communities but also the exposure of those working on site.

Our project goes beyond just researching options for the latest technology by working in close partnership with a number of ‘exemplar construction sites’. Each exemplar site will receive specific advice for their construction procurement programme which will set the key parameters and objectives for the site. By creating bespoke tender requirements through the environmental procurement process, the site contractors will need to consider air quality carefully from the start of the projects.

The process will be informed by the construction site air quality decision hierarchy –

This process of building in requirements and early planning to the construction process will facilitate two key points. The first is considering air quality in planning the construction of a site, for example how can the construction phasing be managed to increase the use of electricity rather than generator power. The second is to provide requirements for equipment choices that are practicable and achievable but go beyond the minimum requirements (e.g. London’s NRMM requirements).

We plan to establish 3-4 sites across Lambeth and Southwark which fall in high-priority geographies regarding potential health impact, and which allow us to explore different construction project types e.g. commercial and residential, high-budget (exemplar) versus budget-constrained, public versus privately commissioned, new build versus refurbishment. We expect these relationships to be long-lasting (~5 years).

There are two overall aims to our proposed work on exemplar sites:

1.   Establish both ‘exemplar’ (where budget is less of a constraint and where we can improve on what is currently considered best practice) and ‘test bed’ (as good as can reasonably be expected given budget constraints – more likely to involve the application of current best practice) construction developments that mitigate against exposure to harmful emissions for vulnerable residents and workers.

2.   Use these partnerships and evidence of good practice to influence the wider construction sector.

If this work is of interest to you or you would like to be involved, please get in touch.