How Should we Measure Sustainability in Construction?

More sustainable construction is what everyone wants, from government policy to procurement bodies to society at large. But how often is this aspiration rather than reality? To be meaningful and manageable, surely sustainability improvements have to be measurable.

Two key sustainability challenges for construction are waste (collectively, we are a very wasteful industry) and the thermal performance of the buildings we create.

Producing construction materials and shipping them to sites consumes large amounts of energy. That energy is wasted if the materials turn out to be not needed or unusable. Despite the requirement for waste management plans the construction sector generates more than 100m tonnes of waste each year (more than one third of the UK total). More than 25 million tonnes of construction waste goes to landfill.

According to WRAP, offsite construction creates 80% less onsite waste than traditional methods. But offsite can, and should, reduce waste by an even greater percentage. The statistic covers all types of offsite construction, not just SIPs, which should create virtually no onsite waste.

The waste produced by the totality of offsite projects is inflated by incorrectly made or installed components. Innovaré eliminates this variability by controlling the entire process from design and manufacture to installation.

The SIP panels are fully recyclable and the manufacturing design process ensures that the majority of offcuts are usable elsewhere. We also design for deconstruction so that it will be easy to reclaim recyclable components at the end of the building’s life.

Performance

Calculating typical thermal performance of different building methods is complicated. U values offer comparisons of heat transmitted through different materials. A typical value for a modern insulated cavity wall is 0.18 W/m²K, which is an impressive number and around 10x better than a solid brick wall.

However, U values are theoretical. They don’t take account of air-tightness of joints or around doors and windows, for example. They also assume that the insulating layer is continuous and correctly installed. There’s also no account of any thermal bridging losses through metal fixings and frames. In practice, the thermal performance of traditionally constructed buildings falls short of theoretical values.

In the case of panels the thermal performance is built-in. U values are determined and guaranteed by the thickness of the insulating layer rather than by applying additional insulating materials on site. The panels are also designed to fit together perfectly to make an airtight structure.

Thermal bridging is considered and minimised in the design phase. This effectively eliminates the onsite variability that makes building performance hard to guarantee with other methods.

The Innovaré system has been proven to meet Passivhaus standards without the need for expensive renewable heating methods such as heat pumps. These demand a heating requirement of less than 15 kWh/m2. Yr.

If you want to be certain of sustainability, then s are the most reliable way to deliver.

To find out more about our sustainable projects, click here.