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Building change
30 Nov 2009
Topics: Construction, Eurocodes, BS 8902, ISO 15686, LCC, Life Cycle Costing, Sustainability
In the still-turbulent wake of the recession, what new challenges is the construction sector going to face and how do standards fit in? Wilma Tulloch reports.
There's reason to believe that the beginning of the end of the recession in construction is in sight. The UK's Office for National Statistics reported in early September 2009 that the fall in construction output was at the lowest level for a year. And in the hard-hit housing sector, a significant tide began to turn as house building starts rose 63 per cent on the previous quarter (though this was still nine per cent down on the same quarter of 2008).
This prompted Brigid O'Leary, senior economist at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), to comment that "the dramatic scaling back in house building activity since the onset of the credit crunch has probably run its course."
What now? Even as economics have preoccupied the industry for the last 18 months, changes have continued to be introduced in other areas.
In particular, a significant change is the impending replacement of national structural engineering codes with Eurocodes in March 2010. In addition, a new standard is addressing the growth of sustainability in the sector and a newly-established standard is making an impact on Life Cycle Costing.
Eurocodes: the story builds
From March 2010, a new set of European structural design codes for building and civil engineering works, conceived and developed over the past 30 years, will replace the existing national standards.
These standards, broadly, cover the requirements for mechanical resistance, stability and resistance to fire.
Eurocodes will be required in the development of all European public works and are likely to become the de-facto standards for the private sector - both in Europe and worldwide. The change may sound seismic, but in fact BSI has been publishing Eurocodes since 2002 and will complete full publication by the end of this year.
The objective of this pan-European harmonization is to level the playing field for contractors across Europe by eliminating the national standards that have been a barrier to penetrating non-domestic markets. Additionally, there is plenty of evidence that the codes will be used further afield than Europe - Singapore is already adopting them and BSI has registered interest in China and India.
Conversely, it also opens the UK market to overseas firms, but Jonathan Griffin, BSI's head of market development for construction is not concerned: "The engineering profession in the UK is very strong and well able to compete," he states.
Meanwhile, what is the industry itself making of the transition? BSI survey results from July 2009 found that around 85 per cent of Britain's structural design engineers expect to be using Eurocodes by March 2010 - although slightly less than one-third of those surveyed are using them already.
Steve Denton, director of bridge and structural engineering at Parsons Brinckerhoff and a visiting professor at the University of Bath, believes the transition represents "a very significant change for the UK industry".
"It is not surprising that many designers have yet to transition to Eurocodes," Denton adds. "Designing to British and European standards in parallel for an extended period would be inefficient, and a full transition was not possible until National Annexes were published.
"The withdrawal of conflicting standards in March 2010 provides a major impetus and many organizations are well advanced in implementing their transition plans."
For instance Parsons Brinckerhoff - which is one of the world's leading planning, engineering, and programme and construction management organizations - has been preparing for the transition for almost 10 years as well as supporting its clients in managing the change.
The BSI survey also indicates that the UK industry is keen to take advantage of the international opportunities afforded by the codes, with 60 per cent saying that access to other European national annexes is essential or desirable.
Denton further notes that change is inevitable. What is crucial, he says, is that the industry manages the change as effectively as possible.
Sustainable construction
A perhaps more far-reaching and long-term change in construction is the growing demand for sustainable practices along the entire life cycle of the build process. The UK Government is now looking for all new homes and schools to be zero carbon by 2016 (by 2015 in Wales) and for all non-domestic public sector buildings to be zero carbon by 2019.
In addition, Site Waste Management Plans, Energy Performance Certificates and use of the Code for Sustainable Homes have become mandatory, and use of the BREEAM environmental assessment methodology is growing quickly. Finally, the government's Strategy for Sustainable Construction, although not legislation, is setting the future direction of the sector.
One response to the growing need for sustainable buildings has been the ongoing review of the materials being used, quite literally, from the ground up.
In 2008, the Construction Products Association, representing the UK's manufacturers and suppliers of construction products, components and fittings, turned to BSI for help with identifying sustainable building materials. These sit at the core of sustainable building practice, but aside from the well-established Forestry Stewardship Council scheme for timber, there is a lack of trusted and consistent information for procurers to distinguish between sustainable and less sustainable products. Moreover, the industry needed something that would allow it to comply with government legislation.
The result is the newly published BS 8902, a specification for responsible sourcing sector certification schemes for construction products. The standard covers construction materials and products, everything from timber, concrete and steel to PVC window frames.
"The standard outlines a series of requirements for schemes to be set up by each industry sector to support the responsible sourcing of construction products," explains Katherine Hunter, BSI's head of market development for sustainability. "The next stage is for sector scheme councils to develop their own schemes in line with BS 8902." Hunter says that there has been a huge amount of interest in the standard thus far, from both government and the industry.
Life Cycle Costing
We all want to know what things cost before we buy them. The people who purchase buildings are no different. For a number of years, it has been the practice in construction - among other disciplines and especially in the public sector - for a "life cycle cost" to be calculated. That means the initial capital cost plus the on-going running and maintenance costs over a fixed term of years, with the term defined by the client.
In the case of buildings and other infrastructure, there has been no standard way to make that calculation. In 2008, ISO 15686-5 Buildings and constructed assets. Service-life planning - Part 5: Life-cycle costing was published to address life cycle costing (LCC). ("Whole life costing" is a term used in the UK which covers a slightly broader methodology including things like finance and income from land sale).
There is broad agreement that the standard was necessary. Kathryn Bourke of Whole Life Ltd, specialists in long term construction performance, cost and value, points out that the lack of a standard resulted in client distrust of the results of life cycle cost analysis.
"There was no comparability between different approaches," Bourke says. "Without client trust in such analysis, it just doesn't happen."
Ed Bartlett, director of whole life costing for Balfour Beatty Capital, the investment arm of the UK's largest constructor, concurs: "Situations can arise where different people do it in different ways and give very different answers to clients, so decision makers can't select the right option. Transparency between valuations gives clients confidence that they're getting a more legitimate and accurate answer because they understand the assumptions behind it."
What will be the impact of BS ISO 15686? Bourke feels it is already starting to be clearly felt in the UK, with major clients expecting their advisors, designers and suppliers to measure life cycle impacts: "Previously, it was confined to PFI-type contracting where the bidders had to assess the longer term costs because they were taking them on in the contract."
Meanwhile Bartlett has already seen the standard "make the step from public sector PFI and PPP into public sector design and build".
Moreover, the standard enables constructors to build better and greener; and it is beginning to influence design. As to "better", Bartlett notes that there is often some additional capital investment that needs to be made in order to get longer term savings, which results in a higher cost option initially. Using the standard means that clients can see where they will get the cost of quality back during the lifetime of the building.
Both Bourke and Bartlett also agree that the standard is filtering through to the benefit of systems and product suppliers.
Says Bourke, "There's a knock-on effect throughout the supply chain because designers need service life inputs from suppliers and manufacturers, and both start to optimize designs to take account of the life cycle impacts."
In terms of "greener", Bartlett says that Balfour Beatty has used LCC to evaluate renewable technology for some time "to demonstrate options like biomass and ground source heating, and sell them. The standard gives you a better mechanism to evaluate those options."
Bourke adds that when assessing life cycle impacts in respect of carbon emissions, for instance, "you clearly see the importance of considering passive measures to reduce energy consumption from the earliest stages of design. These are options that become impossible or prohibitively expensive to ?bolt on' at a late stage of design.
"You can also see the relative contributions of these measures to overall carbon reduction," she concludes. "And there's going to be increasing awareness of this as requirements like the Carbon Reduction Commitment start to take effect over the next few years."
For more information on on Eurocodes, visit:www.bsigroup.com/nov09eurocodes
For more information on the standard for the responsible sourcing of construction products, visit:www.bsigroup.com/nov09bs8902
>> BSI AND EUROCODES
BSI has played a major role in the Eurocodes implementation group and is also undertaking a number of initiatives to make it easier to use the codes. These include a series of guide books on using Eurocodes to be published in 2010 following on from the well-received Structural Eurocodes Companion (available free from www.bsigroup.com/eurocodes).
An online service is also being developed, in which all codes, UK annexes and non-contradictory complementary information will be integrated for ease of access.
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