Implementing Sustainability Services into Superstructures
By Charlie Dando, Apprentice Structural Engineer, Superstructures
The construction industry is on the precipice of a monumental change to design and build lower carbon buildings in alignment with NET Zero Targets. This will see the ‘standard’ practises used within construction today, challenged and changed in the ambition of reducing both the operational and embodied carbon within projects. It is up for debate when this will become legislation, but at Superstructures, we have taken a proactive approach to implement sustainable design services into our usual business operations to enable our clients to have the option for lower embodied carbon designs to be produced. The implementation of sustainability into our business has been an interesting process.
How our Sustainability efforts began.
We began with the formation of the Sustainability Team which consists of myself and my colleagues Holly Peirson (Graduate Structural Engineer), Michael Kaye (Graduate Structural Engineer) and Jessica Beardsworth (Marketing and Client Relationship Manager). We formed the team back in June 2023 and since then have made a continual effort to develop our knowledge and understanding of sustainable design within structural engineering. The main focuses of our work have been:
- What strategies can we use to reduce the embodied carbon in our designs?
- How can we make our clients aware of these services?
- How will we get all of our technical team involved in this?
What strategies can we use to reduce the embodied carbon in our designs?
We have decided to offer 3 strategies to our clients to achieve a lower carbon design on their projects. These have been formed by looking at the main principles of sustainable design and how embodied carbon is calculated.
For more information on each strategy, please feel free to get in touch.
How can we make our clients aware of these services?
We have utilised 3 main methods for this in making our clients aware of our sustainable services, which include our marketing strategy, our sustainable literature piece, and sustainable concepts.
Our marketing strategy has been developed and implemented by my colleague, Jessica Beardsworth, who has produced posts for both our LinkedIn and Instagram accounts. We, as the sustainability team, have also had input with this by providing sustainability facts and producing blog posts, like this one.
The sustainable literature piece has been developed to be issued to our clients alongside our standard quote. The purpose of this literature piece is to firstly make clients aware of the carbon problem within the construction industry and the impact this has on a global scale. It then explains our methodology for this and the services we offer. We hope that this will encourage clients to enquire about this and allow us to be involved in sustainable projects.
The sustainable concept was an idea that we had early on in the teams formation, which we have developed further to the point where we are now issuing sustainable concepts on selected projects. You can find out more about our concepts by enquiring here.
How will we get all of our technical team involved in this?
The sustainability team here at Superstructures want to get everyone involved and ensure that all of our technical team are competent in working on sustainable projects. It is important that we all gain experience and an understanding of the process.
One way in which we have done this was by attending regular CPD sessions hosted externally. We value people’s perspectives on sustainable design and how this can be achieved, from people outside our business. It also aids us in keeping current with the latest and upcoming innovations in this area. We have also made the effort to host in house CPD sessions, where we share our findings with the rest of our technical team.
Do you have a sustainability project that requires sustainable Structural Engineers! Contact us today to receive our complimentary literature pack and find out how we can help support you.
