- Case studies
- Projects seeking partners
- Lessons learnt
- Best practice today
- Life-cycle costing made simple
- Sustainable refurbishment
A Framework for Sustainable Construction in the UK
The Sustainability Forum is an organisation established in 2004 to provide strategic advice on sustainable construction issues to the UK government and construction industry. Its members represent a broad range of sectors across the industry in the UK. As part of its work, a Framework is being developed to provide a clear national framework for the UK construction sector to help it deliver more sustainable construction: what is sustainable construction, what are the priorities for action, and what should the industry aim to achieve (ie what are its key targets)? It aims to set a very clear agenda for the UK industry which everyone in and associated with the industry will feel able to buy into.
The Framework has been produced through a process of industry consultation; the targets, in particular, were developed entirely by industry representatives at a series of workshops. These are intended to be aspirational targets overall, although the interim targets must be stretching but achievable. There is still further development work to be done on these targets: defining the scope of each of them; what area of the built environment they are to be applied to; current benchmarks, and from an understanding of current performance identifying what would be realistic interm targets; and so on.
The TABLE shows the targets as they were originally developed. These are the issues that the construction industry in the UK feels are most important for it to address if it is to contribute to a more sustainable built environment. It is not intended to be a complete list of what should be considered in a construction project: there are many other issues, such as biodiversity, which are not currently represented. However, it was felt counter-productive to measure progress against too many targets: in time, as performance improves in these areas, we can consider whether to bring in new topics.