Materials

It has always been possible to reduce building waste – in theory. But very high levels of waste have simply been priced into contracts, and unneeded materials simply slung onto lorries, taken away by skips and dumped.

But along with other industries, construction is now being forced to confront the high environmental costs of materials. Issues include running out of certain minerals and other non-renewable products, habitat and species destruction resulting from certain woods, carbon emissions from inefficient logistics, and unacceptable working conditions among those mining or harvesting products.

Willmott Dixon leads industry in improving material sourcing selection and resource efficiency usage. 

Investment in efficiency

At Willmott Dixon, we try to minimize materials use where we can. For example, we will try to keep as much of the existing elements as possible if carrying out a refurbishment.

Building Information Modelling (BIM) increasingly forms a part of our efforts. This allows us to create 3D software models of projects before we build them in reality. We are also investing heavily in an initiative called BIMM. The second M is for management of information. We are now able to establish the environmental performance of a building, sequence, schedule materials more precisely, take advantage of off-site management with more confidence and make less mistakes that need snagging.

Our Sunesis process was developed for schools projects. It has now been adapted for use on all manner of public buildings. Sunesis uses repetitive, tried and tested design elements that can be combined in endless ways – rather like a Lego set – to produce customised buildings which can be 30% cheaper than comparable projects to build while reducing waste.

Working with industry

We are at the forefront of developing policy and guidance on responsible sourcing and embodied impacts of materials for accurate life-cycle analysis. Willmott Dixon is heading top industry body, UK Contractor’s Group’s (UKCG) work to develop guidance for responsible sourcing and embodied impacts.

We are engaging with the Construction Products Association (CPA) to collectively develop better-sourced products which pose lower risks to people and the environment.

Promoting renewable construction methods

Willmott Dixon is an enthusiastic proponent of cross-laminated timber (CLT) and has used it to build 10 schemes, as well as the largest wooden residential project in the UK, Bridport House, Hackney. Trees to replace wood for this eight storey building grew back in the Austrian forests it came from in just over an hour and a half.

Meanwhile, the wood panels are computer-designed and pre-cut in the factory for rapid assembly onsite. And using timber instead of reinforced concrete saved 892 tonnes of carbon –12 years of operational energy only mitigated by 61 years of renewable energy at 20% of scheme requirement. Bridport also had easily achievable airtightness of 3m3/m2.hr @50 pa which is three times better than minimum Building Regulations.