Has there been an increase?

There are many such projects around the UK. As a country, we need more housing and local authorities are looking at urban areas which need better housing to regenerate the area and improve its viability in terms of housing and jobs. Increasingly, though, these local authorities are under pressure to ensure such projects meet increasingly stringent environmental considerations.

For many firms, it can be difficult to meet the more stringent standards being demanded, which is why a consultancy firm, such as Carbon Green, can be so important during the planning stage.

With the Bordon project, we were asked to put together a sustainability strategy which involved about 400 documents in the application covering all the different aspects of the project from engineering, to construction and occupancy. The aim was to demonstrate the site’s sustainability credentials and show that they had complied with the requirements of the local authority.

The biggest of these was to reduce CO2 emissions. They wanted a solution which complied with sustainable certification schemes such as Sustainable Homes and expected positive ecological outcomes from the strategy.

What were the major obstacles?

Refining this strategy was a lengthy process. In total, we went through approximately 20 revisions of the strategy in discussions with the local authority. Key to this was the issue of where the project was going to get its energy from. For example, would it be a centralised community combined heat and power system or would it be gas and electric?

The former has been shown to potentially deliver reduced carbon emissions, but it can be complicated to implement and may not be appropriate to all situations. It was keenly debated and discussions rumbled on for a long time.

To deliver the strategy, we had to work with all the different stakeholders and organisations involved in the construction to ensure the strategy fitted the bill. Often, this involves a degree of flexibility and this proved to be the case here. Late in proceedings we realised that the idea of a combined heat and power system wasn’t going to work.

It needed a certain level of management and the company felt that it wouldn’t be able to meet the requirements. Instead, we are currently working on individual combined heat and power systems for each of the blocks within the scheme

Does this happen often?

This, then, is the key to every good strategy. It must be flexible to adapt and evolve as needed. The goalposts often tend to move, usually because of financial reasons. A good strategy will be good enough to cope, and a good consultancy firm will be able to understand both the practical and financial realities within which the firm will work.

Each project gives us more insights into the strategy and gives us more lessons which will feed into future work. This project has been a fantastic learning experience and has given us plenty to work with for the future.

Has there been an increase?

There are many such projects around the UK. As a country, we need more housing and local authorities are looking at urban areas which need better housing to regenerate the area and improve its viability in terms of housing and jobs. Increasingly, though, these local authorities are under pressure to ensure such projects meet increasingly stringent environmental considerations.

For many firms, it can be difficult to meet the more stringent standards being demanded, which is why a consultancy firm, such as Carbon Green, can be so important during the planning stage.

With the Bordon project, we were asked to put together a sustainability strategy which involved about 400 documents in the application covering all the different aspects of the project from engineering, to construction and occupancy. The aim was to demonstrate the site’s sustainability credentials and show that they had complied with the requirements of the local authority.

The biggest of these was to reduce CO2 emissions. They wanted a solution which complied with sustainable certification schemes such as Sustainable Homes and expected positive ecological outcomes from the strategy.

What were the major obstacles?

Refining this strategy was a lengthy process. In total, we went through approximately 20 revisions of the strategy in discussions with the local authority. Key to this was the issue of where the project was going to get its energy from. For example, would it be a centralised community combined heat and power system or would it be gas and electric?

The former has been shown to potentially deliver reduced carbon emissions, but it can be complicated to implement and may not be appropriate to all situations. It was keenly debated and discussions rumbled on for a long time.

To deliver the strategy, we had to work with all the different stakeholders and organisations involved in the construction to ensure the strategy fitted the bill. Often, this involves a degree of flexibility and this proved to be the case here. Late in proceedings we realised that the idea of a combined heat and power system wasn’t going to work.

It needed a certain level of management and the company felt that it wouldn’t be able to meet the requirements. Instead, we are currently working on individual combined heat and power systems for each of the blocks within the scheme

Does this happen often?

This, then, is the key to every good strategy. It must be flexible to adapt and evolve as needed. The goalposts often tend to move, usually because of financial reasons. A good strategy will be good enough to cope, and a good consultancy firm will be able to understand both the practical and financial realities within which the firm will work.

Each project gives us more insights into the strategy and gives us more lessons which will feed into future work. This project has been a fantastic learning experience and has given us plenty to work with for the future.