Construction sector resilience

On 28th January, Climate East Midlands facilitated a workshop for businesses in the Construction sector, focusing on resilience to severe weather and climate change. The workshop was kindly hosted by Simons Group in Lincoln.

Rosi Fieldson, Head of Environment at Simons Group, discussed some of the key challenges facing construction companies as a result of climate change and the increased frequency of severe weather events:

• Keeping the workforce safe on building sites
• Limiting liability for property damage
• Meeting client expectations
• Performance liability
• Identifying future opportunities

Sandy Patience, architect and editor of GreenSpec, gave a presentation on how the design of buildings and the materials used, will need to change in a warming climate. He suggested that much can be learned from the style of buildings in the Mediterranean climate, and the various ways that solar shading, thermal mass and natural ventilation can be provided. He also covered building for warmer winters, reduced summer rainfall, and an increase in extreme weather events. The advantages of “building now for 2050” were clearly outlined.

Kay Johnstone, Environment and Business Advisor at the Environment Agency’s Climate Ready service, talked about how existing management systems and standards can be used to increase business resilience. In particular she focused on business process standards, such as ISO 14001 (Environment Management) and ISO 22301 (Business Continuity). Climate Ready and BSI have published a smart guide on "Adapting to Climate Change using your Business Continuity Management System," which is free to download from the BSI website. Kay also introduced the Climate Ready guidance on "Assessing and managing climate change risks in supply chains."

Discussions about what is needed to bring about change in the sector, to increase resilience, yielded wide-ranging ideas, reflecting the range of backgrounds of the participants:

• More education is needed in relation to climate change impacts, but don’t over-burden people with doom-laden messages.
• Engage Planners and make the link with construction. (Interestingly, Climate Ready and Climate UK have already started to do this, by developing tools and resources)
• Get the message across that Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) can save money.
• Change attitudes in the insurance industry: property should not just be re-instated to how it was pre-flood, but have flood resilience built in to the renovation.

Climate East Midlands also introduced the Business Resilience Health Check tool, which produces a prioritised action plan for your business. Several participants were able to testify to the tool's usefulness, having already used it.

This workshop was part of the Building Business Resilience project.

For more information please contact [email protected]