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| UK builders to reduce lifetime emissions of major developments Leading UK construction organisations have joined together to develop a common approach to reduce emissions across the whole lifetime of major infrastructure projects. For the first time, developers of road and rail now have a consistent means to assess the carbon impacts of trains, cars and lorries using their services and can use this information to understand the total carbon impacts of infrastructure projects. Led by Forum for the Future – the Highways Agency, RSSB (with participation from Network Rail), Atkins, and Balfour Beatty have agreed to look at the emissions of projects over their full lifecycles – managing carbon in the pre-design, design and construction activities, and also addressing and considering the carbon that arises during maintenance, operation, use and decommissioning activities. By proactively managing and reducing carbon smartly, the construction sector plans to reduce unnecessary expenditure, making services more efficient and contributing to a long-term reduction in energy use. The new approach or 'framework' is designed to help clients and project-leaders create processes that identify, manage and reduce carbon and focuses on the most significant, most controllable and most reducible carbon emissions associated with projects. The framework was developed through Forum For The Future's Engineers of the 21st Century scheme. The project team consisted of young engineers from each of the partner organisations and was supported by a steering group, made up of representatives from the partner organisations and the Royal Academy of Engineering. write your comments about the article :: © 2009 Construction News :: home page |