How Sustainable Business Practice Can Add Value

By Jonathan Garrett, Group Head of Sustainability at Balfour Beatty

Implementing a sustainability strategy may seem daunting, but given the right framework, ambition and leadership, it can lead to financial savings and new business opportunities, playing a vital role in an organisation’s future success.

In October 2009, we launched our 2020 vision and roadmap to help transform Balfour Beatty into a fully sustainable business.  Two years on, we have made significant progress on our journey to embed sustainability into the way we do things.  Implementing the roadmap has proven to be a continual improvement process in its own right.  As a company that operates across the infrastructure life cycle from design to construction, maintenance and operation across many geographies we can make an important contribution to sustainable development. 

Our view of sustainability goes beyond carbon and the environment. It is about communities and people, influencing the agenda, and leaving a lasting legacy.  Our approach to sustainable construction is focused on five broad themes:

Influencing the market

To be a truly sustainable business we need to help build a market where sustainability is the norm.  WE need to encourage our customers to specify more sustainable infrastructure.  This means influencing policy and decision making and building relationships before we start work on projects.

During 2011, we helped fund the development of the Sustainability Leadership in the Built Environment Programme jointly developed by the UK Green Building Council and the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership.  The Programme is specifically designed for senior directors and managers, decision makers, and leaders from all organisations specifying infrastructure in the built environment.

We help to shape industry thinking and contribute to a variety of government consultations, ranging from reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprinting to biodiversity off-setting through network of 200 environment and sustainability practitioners.  We are helping to shape the sector’s response to the growing issue of water conservation, launching a water action plan in June 2011 through the Strategic Forum for Construction.  This programme covers water measurement and best practice on site during construction for an issue that has received little focus in the sector to date. We believe that water footprinting will grow in importance, moving from water accounting to the local impact of water (severity).  To help inform thinking in this area, our professional services business Parsons Brinckerhoff has created a suite of water footprinting tools.  Our ambition is the development of common solutions for water footprinting within the industry.

The value of the green retrofit market for buildings is estimated to be worth up to £10bn per year in the UK alone.  We have commissioned research on low carbon refurbishment of schools. This work culminated in the Westborough Primary School low carbon demonstrator project in Essex.  The refurbished Edwardian school has increased wall and roof insulation, double glazing, a biomass boiler and solar photovoltaics.  This low carbon learning environment also benefits the local community and generates additional revenue for the school.  The improved acoustic insulation now means the school hall can host evening events without disturbing its neighbours.

Work winning and growth markets

One of the objectives of our roadmap is helping our customers to fulfil their sustainability aspirations.  Getting this right will help to grow our business by using sustainability as a value adding differentiator.

Our joint venture construction business, Gammon Construction, recently completed the Tamar Complex which is Hong Kong’s new seat of government.  We won the contract for our ability to provide world-class design and construction as an integrated package, and for the high standards of sustainability, safety and sensitivity to local needs that we embodied in our approach. Rather than focusing on upfront capital costs, we applied whole-life cost thinking and the best examples of green offices from around the world to deliver a range e of environmental and cost-saving opportunities over the operational life of the building.

The drive to a greener economy is also generating new business opportunities for us.  These include renewable energy such as offshore wind and solar, green retrofit of buildings and energy from waste facilities.  For example, we recently completed a 6.1 MW solar PV project at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona which will meet the energy requirements for 1,000 service families’ homes and built the largest next zero school in the US in Texas, which will generate more energy than it using through renewables. 

We are leading the way on wind projects.  These include supplying and installing the electrical switchgear and cabling for the world’s largest on-shore wind farm at Whitelee in Scotland (over 200 turbines generating 539MW).  Off-shore, we are preferred bidder for the 20 year transmission contracts for the Thanet and Greater Gabbard wind farms in the North Sea, connecting the turbines to the grid.  We will be the largest provider of these services with 40% of the current UK market.  Off-shore wind presents a multi-£billion market for us in terms of investment opportunities, design, construction, operation and maintenance.

Innovation and supply chain collaboration:

Delivering more sustainable infrastructure will not be achieved without innovation and the contribution of our supply chain.  Innovations from our larger projects are then cascaded down to smaller projects.  A good example of this is the sustainable materials expertise we have developed on major road schemes in terms of waste avoidance and using by-products from other industries in construction.  On the A421 near Bedford in the UK, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of power station ash, recycled aggregate and glass plus thousands of car tyres were used in the scheme, saving some 77,000 tonnes of embodied carbon and £3.8m in material savings.

We worked with our supply chain to achieve our first zero waste to landfill project on the A46 road scheme in Nottinghamshire by diverting the last remaining fraction of waste to be used as fuel for the cement kilns supplying the project.  By 2020 we are aiming to achieve zero waste to landfill on all of our projects.

In conjunction with with our supply chain partner Genquip in Wales, we have developed what we believe is the most sustainable site accommodation/welfare unit available on the market (Ecolootion) with its innovative battery pack design, waterless urinals, integral rainwater harvesting and effluent incinerator unit reducing CO₂ emissions by up to 80% over a conventional unit. 

More than the environment

Sustainability is much more than the environment.  We take a holistic view including our supply chain and the communities we serve.  Balfour Beatty is one of 18 major employers working together at Heathrow airport on working on a new sustainability partnership.  We have lead on the development of employment and skills agenda through the creation of a construction academy to help recruit and train local long term unemployed.  We worked with our supply chain partners to provide employment opportunities on our Terminal 2B project, for 38 unemployed from the London boroughs surrounding the airport.

Our projects are a major opportunity for local economic regeneration.  We hold ‘Meet the Buyer’ days and invite local businesses to a presentation on project opportunities (e.g. a school or hospital) followed by face to face interviews with local businesses to maximise the proportion of money spent on local suppliers and sub-contractors.

As part of our sustainability vision, the health and welfare of the public and our staff is paramount. As a result we have been rolling our Zero Harm programme across our business to ensure zero deaths, zero injuries and zero ruined lives through our projects.  We have also be running well-being programmes across a number of our sites such running Health Days to raise awareness of health, wellbeing and lifestyle issues.

Embedding sustainability across the business

Key to our 2020 vision and roadmap is the part all our employees have to play in making it happen.  That is why sustainability is our collective responsibility. To this effect, we have implemented e-learning programmes around ethics and values and launched a new sustainability course for all our employees.  We have also started rolling out bespoke Golden Rules within our organisation to ensure that contractors and part time agency staff can take practical steps to be more sustainable. In addition to our E-learning programme, all of our operating companies have sustainable working groups with champions from different departments to deliver real change.

We have already trained over 15,000 members of staff across our operations and received over 28,000 commitments from our employees to adopt more sustainable behaviours.

In addition, we host regular meetings with the sustainability managers from across the operating companies to share best practice and update each other on the latest developments. Many of these discussions lead to work winning opportunities through joint working.

By working in partnership with suppliers, customers, regulators and other teams across the business on sustainability issues, we firmly that we can offer a real value proposition, helping us secure business for generations to come.