Engineering sustainability

Concurrent engineering can build sustainability into a design.

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Climate change and the sustainability agenda have grown in international importance and recognition.

As the building sector is responsible for higher levels of CO₂ emissions than any other, it forms an integral part of the global sustainability agenda. Consequently there has been a mounting requirement for buildings and developments to be designed and constructed in a more sustainable manner.

Growth of the Market
Key drivers sparking the emergence of sustainable development include growing government regulation, coupled with increasing consumer demand for more sustainable buildings. The market for sustainable buildings is growing rapidly and forecasters predict this trend to continue.

However, in the current climate of limited liquidity, developers are naturally vigilant of the perceived capital cost premium associated with green buildings, despite the life cycle benefits. This is currently a major deterrent to developers adopting sustainable design and construction practices.

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FEATURED COMMENT The article by Mr. Al Abbar hits the core. It throws light to an area which still remains not much explored in this part   1 Comments Read more comments »

Any news of government legislation mandating increased levels of sustainability is frequently met with a degree of resistance and panic.

This need not be the case. Approaching sustainability in the right way, at an early stage of a project, can provide the potential for developments to achieve a high level of sustainability at little or no capital cost premium.

One of the challenges facing design teams today is to ensure that designs comply with the latest sustainability regulations, while also aligning with what the end-user needs and values.

This approach ensures that any sustainability features incorporated into the development are not simply expensive bolt-ons for compliance, but provide real value to the project.

Meeting the Challenge
In dealing with the current challenge of cost effectively incorporating sustainability into construction projects, I look back to the end of the 1990s and aeronautical engineering; a time of growing demand for increasingly low-cost air travel in an era of rising and largely unstable fuel prices. The emergence of the budget air travel market offered an enormous opportunity to aircraft and component manufacturers, despite the financial challenges.

Consequently, during this time, an engineering design management philosophy known as concurrent engineering emerged at the forefront of the industry, as a means of reducing lifecycle costs and shortening design and manufacturing programmes.

There are many principles to concurrent engineering, but in essence it is a systematic method of considering and optimising all aspects of a products lifecycle – from conception to disposal – by carrying out project tasks concurrently, instead of sequentially.