Inspiration for Temple’s EMS Committee taken from Paris COP21

Ellie Holderness - EIA Intern

Temple’s EMS Committee is an employee led group that meets regularly to discuss the environmental performance of the company and to identify events and schemes that could be embedded at Temple in order to promote environmental improvements and good practices for both the company and personal behaviour. Each year the group identifies a series of local, national and international environmental events, around which they can co-ordinate their efforts and this year the EMS Committee has chosen to focus on Paris COP21 

What is COP21?

Between November 30th and December 11th, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be running the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties; otherwise known as Paris COP21. The UNFCCC is one of the three conventions that were established at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and is comprised of 196 member states that meet annually as the Conference of Parties (COP) to determine future goals for tackling climate change. Outcomes from previous conventions include the Kyoto Protocol and the Cancun Agreements. This year’s conference will be vital as it intends to reach a decision regarding a legally-binding, international agreement that will curb additional climate change and deal with its impacts. For the first time in over 20 years of UN negotiations, the conference aims to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C.

In order to help combat climate change in this way, the agreement must focus primarily on mitigation and the transformation to a low-carbon society. The agreement also wishes to raise $100 Billion per year from the donations of developed countries in order to help poorer countries develop in a sustainable manner. Alongside Paris COP21, the French Government has been inundated with requests to support projects and initiatives that are civilian-led. The initiatives cover a wide array of activities that all centre on one thing: the exchange of knowledge. Examples of these projects include the Global Eco-Forum (22nd October) and COP IN MYCITY, a programme that simulates climate negotiations with students in order to draw them in to the approaching conference. The Global Eco-Forum is a 2-day event that will focus on the relationship between energy, climate and cities. Currently 75% of global carbon emissions are produced by urban areas, therefore mitigation strategies are urgently needed in the developed world. Such outcomes from the Eco-Forum will be taken forward to Paris COP21.

What is Temple doing? 

Temple has committed to developing as a low carbon business and in support of that the EMS committee will be arranging a number of climate and low-carbon themed activities in the lead up to COP21. In the spirit of COP IN MYCITY, we already have a local primary school talk in the pipeline. We will be taking over the company’s monthly social events with low carbon themes and we are currently analysing employee commuting so that employees can find out how much carbon they emit getting to and from work. Each month the committee will be identifying new initiatives and hopes that actions such as these will prompt the consideration of how our day-to-day activities affect the climate and energise people into taking action to reduce our impacts. 

Airport Commission recommends 3rd Runway at Heathrow – hear Sir Howard Davies at Runways UK on Monday (6 July)

Rob Whittle - Business Development & Marketing Director

The Airports Commission has published its long-awaited Final Report recommending a 3^rd Runway at Heathrow https://www.gov.uk/government/news/airports-commission-releases-final-report . Your first chance to hear directly from Sir Howard, and to hear the reaction from key stakeholder groups, will be on 6/7^th July at Runways UK 2015 taking place at the Grange Tower Bridge Hotel in London. Temple is a key sponsor to RunwaysUK and we’d be pleased to see you at the event - bookings are on line.

Sir Howard Davies presents at Runways UK Monday (6 July)

Rob Whittle - Business Development & Marketing Director

The Airports Commission will publish its long-awaited Final Report this week. Your first chance to hear directly from Sir Howard, and to hear the reaction from key stakeholder groups, will be on 6/7^th July at RunwaysUK 2015 taking place at the Grange Tower Bridge Hotel in London. Temple is a key sponsor to Runways UK and we’d be pleased to see you at the event. Bookings are on line.

Temple’s take on Green Sky Thinking week

This year a team of Temple staff attended Open City’s Green Sky Thinking; a week-long London-wide events programme, which focuses on how sustainability can be embedded into the built environment. Unlike like other industry events, the festival consists of informal presentations, as well as on-site project talks, an aspect which is very attractive to Temple. Green Sky Thinking attracts key players from the sustainability industry, including; Crossrail, Bam Ferrovial Kier Joint, Innovate UK, Arup, PRP, Skanska, BuroHappold, plus many more.

A large number of our clients hosted events, so it was also a chance to reflect on how Temple is also playing a part in creating a more liveable London, as well as to help generate ideas internally on what else we can be doing. Temple hope to run our own Green Sky Thinking event next year.

To find out more about Temple visit our website here.

Engineering the Future; BuroHappold Engineering

Greg Yiangou – Consultant

“The event showcased 10 different innovative projects that aim to address the challenges created by the rapid urbanisation of London. These projects focused on a wide variety of problems that cities all over the world will be facing, from stress on existing transport networks to health care systems. For me this was the most exciting thing about the talk – they demonstrated how digital technologies and open data have the potential to adapt and solve problems cities are facing across a wide range of sectors”.

The Opportunities & Challenges of Building Farringdon Crossrail Station; Crossrail, Bam Ferrovial Kier Joint Venture

Toby Wastling – Senior Consultant

“This event was interesting at it gave attendees the opportunity to see the Crossrail Farringdon Station site and appreciate the scale of the development. As part of the Crossrail project spoil is being put to beneficial use by being used for a bird sanctuary at Wallasea island. The event also demonstrated the challenges of the project, including the number of unknowns that continue to provide challenges in London construction – underground structures, archaeology, lack of information on utilities to name but a few!”.

How to Build a Sustainable Railway? Crossrail

Toby Wastling – Senior Consultant

“Interesting session to understand how sustainability issues learnt from Crossrail can be taken forward into future projects i.e. Crossrail 2, HS2, Thames Tideway Tunnel. The event discussed the idea of cement free concrete, which is currently being developed. Though innovation has been carried out this is limited due to the lack of knowledge about process – will it be able to support the infrastructure for 120 years?”.

What is the role of the Structural & Civil Engineer in Sustainable Construction? Elliott Wood

Toby Wastling – Senior Consultant

“A real discussion about how architects and engineers can increase sustainability in construction. Part of the solution will be down to the newly qualified professionals who have been educated in sustainability from an early age”.

Overheating; PRP

Amy Cook – Senior Consultant

"I found PRP’s ‘Overheating’ session the most exciting Green Sky Thinking event. Something that is becoming a more prominent theme in regeneration schemes is the idea of ‘community resilience’; It is one thing to ‘build’ resilience into new infrastructure or development for example by using low carbon materials which can withstand higher temperatures or, altering the aspect of dwellings so that their rooms do not receive prolonged hours of direct sunlight. However, to consider climate change within the context of an existing vulnerable community and how its support network may adapt, is a relatively new concept and are a far more difficult notion to incorporate into design.

The event discussed work which has been carried out to understand patterns of behaviour of local communities – is there infrastructure or a support network in place for vulnerable people? An example given was on ventilation: an elderly resident of a care home may not be able to reach to open a window if they’re too hot – is there a support network to ensure they don’t suffer from overheating?".

Healthy Cities, A Wake up Call; LUC

Erica Ward – Senior Consultant

“I attended the ‘Healthy Cities, A Wake up Call’ event hosted by LUC. The most interesting thing I learnt was that although there is a lot of buzz in the industry about getting funding for green infrastructure (due to proven health benefits) from health budgets, this may be more difficult to implement practically. Most health funding is for clinical commissioning and there are much more limited budgets within public health, where this type of funding would come from”.

Green Sky Thinking week

Terry O’Neill – Account Director

"For me the overriding impression I took in attending 8 of the Green Sky Thinking events was the passion and urgency which all of the speakers communicated. They (and we along with them) understand the opportunity now available to us to embed sustainability into the agenda for infrastructure and development. The timing for this should not be underestimated and full advantage should be taken where possible".

Can cycling superhighways give wider benefits?

Martin Gibson - Head of Operations

This month, Boris Johnson launched the start of construction of London’s new North-South segregated cycling superhighway. The route will run from King’s Cross to Elephant and Castle and is part of a package of measures that is hoped to further boost cycling in London. It will be followed fairly soon by a new East-West Superhighway from Tower Hill to Westbourne Terrace. The new routes will extend the superhighway network into and across central London.

A lot of other cities are also trying to dramatically increase cycling. Manchester is looking to develop cycling along the Oxford Road, closing it to car traffic. Edinburgh is trialling a segregated cycle lane along George Street. Cambridge is putting in segregated cycling lanes on key routes.

One of the reasons for increasing cycling is to drive environmental improvements, especially in air quality. Transport for London published its Environmental Evaluation Report for the new cycle superhighways in January. This predicts route wide benefits and no adverse route wide effects. The report shows that there will be both positive and negative local environmental impacts from the proposed new cycle superhighways. The positive effects considerably outweigh the negative effects, with air quality and noise due to improve in a number of locations.

The study behind the report shows that changes in traffic will re-distribute vehicle emissions but will not increase overall emission levels. It does not mention the possibility of an overall reduction in emissions on a wider scale. However, work in the late 1990’s showed that reducing road capacity can sometimes lead to traffic effectively disappearing. If this were to happen, then the cycle routes should lead to a wider improvement in air quality.

From the scale of highway capacity reduction that the new cycle superhighways will produce, it seems possible that traffic could reduce. If it does, this should lead to improvements in air quality and reductions in noise that are significant enough to be considered more than just local. If evidence emerges that there are wider air quality benefits, it should provide more impetus for innovative projects that are currently on only at the concept phase. In London alone, these include a Norman Foster’s sky cycle, the London Underline and the Floating Track on the Thames.

It may be hard to disaggregate the effect that the segregated cycle highways will have on London’s environment but it will be important to see if air quality improves when they are completed.

Housing policies too ‘personal’ to feature heavily in top parties’ campaigns?

Amy Cook - Senior Consultant & Genevieve Oller - Senior Marketing Executive

As the parties prepare to go head-to-head in the 2015 General Elections, housing policy may be a means of leveraging votes, but, to what extent will their agendas actually have a noticeable impact on the housing sector? Temple attended a fantastic event organised by PRP, which asked ‘what does the General Election 2015 mean for the housing industry?’.

The opening speaker Mike Craven (Lexington Partner and former Chief Media Spokesman for the Labour Party) spent time exploring the unprecedented nature of this election due to the uncertainty of which political party may hold the majority. As the smaller parties such as UKIP and the Greens have started to gain strength in some of the traditional strongholds of the ‘big three’, precious votes which could win a majority for Labour or the Conservatives are being lost.

Due to this uncertainty there’s not likely to be bold stance on issues such as housing, on account of a reluctance to alienate any of their current supporters. Steve Akehurst, Public Affairs Officer at Shelter, suggested that housing is such a ‘personal’ issue that it can often be highly controversial. Indeed the parties policies are notably similar; Labour have set their target at 200,000 new homes in the next term, with Conservatives planning for a similar level and Liberal Democrats at 300,000. All parties also recognise the need for more affordable housing and protection of the greenbelt. However, it was concluded that housing would be more prominent in the campaigns now than it was back in 2005. Voters will be expecting the parties to set out policies that will help relieve the pressure of a market which is struggling to meet demand. In particular we could see polices that attract the votes of 20/30 year olds with young families who are unable to move out of the parental home.

Steve Akehurst also suggested that parties are unlikely to set out strong policies in the run up to the election, as these kinds of policies are unlikely to swing their campaigns. The speaker also felt that the next term in Government would not see such radical change to the planning system, such as the NPPF which is now bedding down quite well.

The uncertainty of the current political climate brought into question whether there should be an ‘Independent Committee’ set up to champion these large new housing development schemes – urban extensions; new garden cities – to ensure that there is a long-term driver towards building new homes outside of political time-scales.

Temple's Peter Cole (Principal Consultant) discusses Temple's take on what's needed from future housing policies; 

"The dichotomy that the Conservative Party is currently grappling with in terms of new housing is one that I think the UK as a whole has to wake up to. Building solely on brownfield sites is not going to solve our housing shortage and the uneasy co-existence of house building/buying incentives and greenbelt protection is only going to get more complicated. Our role as environmental planners and sustainability practitioners is to make those hard choices slightly easier for everyone to live with...."

Engineering the best environment for partnership

Giulia Civello - Senior Consultant & Carole Quinn - Consultant

Key to the delivery of a successful infrastructure project is an effective working partnership between engineers and environmental consultants. A successful relationship between these two parties provides benefits throughout the project lifecycle and ultimately results in the delivery of a better project for less cost.

Temple Group’s experience on major infrastructure projects has highlighted three key areas which are integral to a successful partnership between environmental consultants and engineers:

• effective communication;
• a bespoke team set up; and
• clearly defined deliverables embedded within an integrated programme.

Combining these factors enables environmental consultants and engineers to form a productive partnership, striking a balance between finding an effective environmental outcome without entailing excessive cost or compromising design feasibility.

Benefits include the development of a more robust design which can withstand challenge, facilitate the gaining of consents, decrease development and capital costs and deliver a project with a reduced environmental impact.

Many of the key factors in realising these benefits have been learnt through Temple Group’s role on major infrastructure projects, including HS2 and the Norton Bridge Scheme, which was the subject of a Development Consent Order application.

Effective communication

Typically, tensions between engineers and environmental consultants result from physical working barriers. The need to react quickly to client demands can often result in a lack of consultation with the environmental team. Co-location breaks down these barriers, creating a cohesive, integrated team who understand each other’s working processes and decision making structure. It promotes clear and efficient communication, which enables a more rapid response to be provided to the client.

Close collaborative working between the two teams facilitates an iterative design process and prevents the development of design options which are not feasible from either an engineering or environmental perspective. A proactive rather than reactive working relationship enables the teams to work together to produce an optimal solution from the outset, rather than providing comment retrospectively which incurs additional time and cost.

Team set up

A dedicated engineering liaison team within the environmental team provides a clear point of contact for the project engineers and controls the flow of information. This also ensures that the engineering / environment interface is clearly visible to the client, something which can be lacking on projects where both engineering and environmental services are provided by a large multidisciplinary firm. This interface provides an important opportunity to critically review and challenge engineering designs ensuring a robust project in the event of challenge.

Multidisciplinary workshops are an important tool to facilitate an integrated approach to design, bringing together environmental and engineering expertise. Workshops are particularly important for the development of mitigation, ensuring that environmental measures are developed in the context of engineering constraints and requirements, and thereby preventing abortive work and additional costs.

“Differing perspectives, opinions and ways of doing things, don’t have to be seen as a negative; it can be the driver for improved performance, the push to go beyond the norm and can be the difference between a good and a great project.” Robert Slatcher, Temple Group

Clearly defining deliverables

It is critical to the success of a project that deliverables are fit for their intended purpose. For the environmental consultant, this is most likely the Environmental Impact Assessment. In order to ensure that deliverables are fit for purpose, they must be clearly defined and agreed by all key parties and the client at project inception. This shared understanding should include elements such as the delivery date, and also the deliverable format. A commonly encountered example which covers both these issues is GIS shapefiles versus engineering CAD files. While the engineering design is often held within a CAD model, the environmental topic teams are dependent on GIS shapefiles to complete their assessment. The conversion between CAD and GIS is not an instantaneous process and requires rigorous checking to ensure that the GIS outputs accurately align with the CAD model. Any agreed delivery dates of an engineering design to environmental assessment teams must therefore build in time for this conversion and quality checking to take place.

This example highlights the importance of mutual understanding between the engineering and environment teams as to the end use of their deliverables, something that is greatly improved through an integrated, co-located team.

The delivery of a robust design on time and on budget is ultimately dependent on inputs being received in good time ahead of a design freeze and the careful sequencing of workstreams across the engineering and environment teams. Therefore, an integrated programme which reflects the interaction between engineering and environment is fundamental to project delivery.

“There will always be a balance between engineering, cost, societal benefit / impact and environmental protection – that is in essence what sustainable development is all about! But as long as each of these factors is given due consideration and dealt in a constructive and professional way, then it will be for the good of the scheme.” Tom Smeeton, Temple Group