The huge stakeholder engagement effort that informed the new prison design was the biggest piece of research ever undertaken by the department into the effectiveness of prison design and building use.
Although the operational carbon will accumulate overtime, a decarbonised grid will mean that the growth rate will flatten, and after 60 years the embodied carbon will still remain higher than operational carbon, as shown in Figure 2.This means that the focus and the priority should shift from operational to embodied carbon during the design..
Embodied and operational carbon increase in a decarbonised grid scenario.In this context, the request for Whole Life Carbon Assessment (WLCA) has increased notably over the last few years.The production of WLCA is required by BREEAM and the GLA.
In a BREEAM NC 2018 assessment, it is possible to achieve up to 7 credits by doing a WLCA, so for developments that aspire to Excellent or Outstanding ratings the analysis of embodied carbon has become very important.The GLA requires the preparation of a WLCA pre-planning and at post-construction and requires the analysis of the results both with the current carbon factors and a decarbonised scenario.. Additionally, bodies such as the London Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI), RIBA, GLA and UKGBC, have developed guidance documents on embodied carbon, which include specific targets and roadmaps to zero carbon prior 2050.
Whilst these four bodies have been essential in pushing the agenda for low carbon, there has been some confusion across the industry due to the misalignment of targets and WLCA scopes between them as demonstrated in Figure 3.
LETI has been working in collaboration with other bodies and industry groups to resolve these inconsistencies and have published the ‘Embodied carbon target alignment document’.. Based on this document and the comparison of the current targets defined by LETI, RIBA and GLA, an average performance for non-domestic commercial building performance (A-C) would be to achieve an embodied carbon around 1400kgCO.The answer isn’t simply to do more jobs, it’s to accomplish more while simultaneously improving quality of life for construction workers.
McKinsey have discussed suicide rates in construction previously, as well as other difficulties the industry is facing.One of the core goals here is to return time back to the worker.. Lamont says much of this work is about humanising the workforce and humanising the workshop through technology.
Of course, the industry’s aging workforce and skills shortage means that we also need to make the industry more attractive for workers in order to overcome other problems we’re facing.We need to be clever in our approach to getting workers to engage with technology, because many of them are frightened and reticent about its adoption.