Sustainable Buildings Awareness Raising and Knowledge Transfer
North West England, UK
PROJECT TEAM & PARTNERS
- Northwest Regional Development Agency
- Centre for Construction Innovation
CONTRACT VALUE - £220,000
TIMESCALE - 2 years
DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT
The overarching aim of this project is, over a two year period 2009 - 2011, to raise awareness and provide knowledge of the sustainable buildings agenda - aligned with the Northwest Development Agency's Sustainable Buildings Policy. A range of activities are taking place over a two year period 2009 - 2001. These include over 20 events that will cover the ten Sustainable Buildings Policy areas and will have speakers from the Northwest Development Agency, government and non-government support agencies, and other specialist speakers. For each of the ten areas of the policy along with BREEAM and Energy Performance Certificates there will be a user-friendly factsheet produced and made readily available. There will be annual conferences looking at Sustainable Building Best Practices in the region. Regional based case studies will be written covering each of the areas of the policy. Importantly, a designated website has been launched to disseminate all of the associated information, support and guidance for the sector www.sustainablebuildingsnw.co.uk. In the second year of the events, the programme is designed to take the attendees (contractor and client organisations) on site visits looking at the best of the case studies projects.
The outcome will be a better informed and confident sector to
take forward and deliver the sustainable buildings agenda.
PROJECT TARGETS
Direct Project Outputs - Targets/deliverables are as outlined
above:
- 20 events
- 2 conferences
- 10 factsheets
- 12 case studies
- Designated website
Outcomes - The NWDA Sustainable Buildings Policy has been developed to set the standard for commercial developments in the Northwest and to meet the challenges of climate change. The policy was approved by the NWDA Board in May 2007 for all new build and major refurbishment projects over £500,000.
BREEAM Standard - The BREEAM Standard of 'Excellent' has been applied as one of the key performance indicators for new build developments and 'Very Good' for Major Refurbishment projects. All developments should strive to achieve Excellent which will be demonstrated through the pre and post construction BREEAM assessments.
Carbon, Waste & Water - A progressive pathway has been applied to these three primary KPI's culminating in zero carbon, waste and water in 2020.
CHALLENGES FACED
A key challenge of this project and other similar awareness raising projects is reaching the right person, which ultimately requires reaching the 'influencers' in an organisation.
On this project, NWDA and CCI have utilised their own well established networks and databases which reach, client side (planners, procurement teams, capital programme teams, sustainability teams) and contractor side (developers, architects, suppliers, manufactures) personnel. CCI also worked in partnership with a range of other organisations that have similar agenda in order to disseminate the information and support available.
INNOVATIVE PRACTICE
The project also required that a set case studies be produced. The brief was to produce approximately one for each of the Sustainable Buildings policy areas. One of the key issues with this agenda is having the evidence to attract other clients and contractors to change their practices. In order to produce more case studies CCI made a call for NWDA exemplar projects via the website and at each of the events. The call involved CCI asking organisations, on behalf of NWDA, that have or are working on sustainable projects to complete a case study template so as to collect the key information needed and thus reducing the time demands needed by ourselves to compile the case studies. This approach will allow us hopefully to produce twice as many case studies. By calling them NWDA Exemplar Projects organisations are attracted by the recognition and prestige their work can be associated with.
CONTACT DETAILS
Matt Waltho, Environmental Policy Manager
Northwest Regional Development Agency
Tel: 01925 400295
E-mail: matt.waltho@nwda.co.uk