This week at BuilderScrap, we have come across this interesting article about sustainable building materials on ehow.com.  Have a read, and let us know what you think.

In all of the phases of construction of a new house there are material decisions that are required. The materials for the foundation, the material for the super-structure of the house and so on. In choosing these materials home builders have more choices than ever to build using sustainable products. This article will discuss the major steps in the construction of a house and correlate those major phases to the applicable sustainable materials that can be used. In most instances the sustainable material choice has a higher “up front” cost compared to conventional materials but as many business cases have shown they have a pay back over the long run when considering the lower maintenance costs and the longevity of the materials. Another major factor to consider with sustainable materials is the instant “character” that is integrated into the construction of your new home.
According to the U.S. Green Building Council “A green home will have been constructed or renovated with healthy, non-toxic building materials and furnishings, like low- and zero-VOC (volatile organic compound) paints and sealants and non-toxic materials like strawboard for the sub-flooring. Wood-based features should come from rapidly renewable sources like bamboo, but if tropical hardwoods are used, they must be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. A green home uses salvaged materials like kitchen tiles and materials with significant recycled content.”

Let us here at BuilderScrap know what you think!

More from BuilderScrap.com on the Draft Strategy for Sustainable Construction.  Todays question reflects on the targets and deliverables the draft proposed to deliver sustainability in the industry.

Q: If you agree that the proposed key actions and deliverables covered in the People Agenda reflect the main priority areas to deliver sustainability for the industry, what specific work streams and targets would help deliver these commitments?

1. Most respondents (including ConstructionSkills) agreed that the proposed key actions and targets reflected the main priority areas, but did not comment specifically on the targets. A few specifically affirmed their agreement; and a few others thought they were insufficiently challenging or expressed concern about target dates.

2. Responses were received from a wide range of organisations – ConstructionSkills, professional institutions, trade bodies, companies and colleges, as well as a mix of other organisations. Some respondents said they would like more details on proposed actions. Few common threads could be identified. A few respondents offered views about the scope of the People agenda and the importance of involving end users, wider communities and the public.

3. Some respondents said that the areas addressed by the People agenda were too focused on trade skills and could pay more attention to the needs of professionals and designers and to wider regeneration issues. The role of the professional institutions was considered important.

BuilderScrap recently exhibited at the Greenbuild Expo in Manchester, where we met lots of interesting people from all walks of the construction industry.  Here are some pictures from the two days we spent there:

BuilderScrap‘s own Eddie McGee gave a superb speech about lowering construction costs and waste

Danielle working hard for BuilderScrap handing out all our information on reuse of building materials

Managing Director Les Owens and Danielle spreading the BuilderScrap word!

More from Draft Strategy for Sustainable Construction. At BuilderScrap.com we continue to publish extracts from this draft not only because it aligns with our goals but also the nature of feedback given is important to us.  Let us know what you think!

Q: Which of the proposed actions for business do you consider to be a priority? Why? What are the barriers to implementing this action and how might they be overcome? Who should take the lead in implementing this action?

1. Some respondents felt it wrong to focus on priorities since action was required across a broad front. Others suggested a single action. Some discussed the difficulty of appraising design quality.

2. The three top priorities identified by respondents were: early supply chain engagement or integration; greater demand for Design Quality Indicators (DQIs) and BREEAM; and for clients to drive the process. There was little comment on how contractors might promote the adoption of DQIs more effectively when this was primarily an issue for the client. There was an
important role for the public sector as client and scope for using better regulation to promote the uptake of BREEAM standards.

3. A number of respondents felt that more attention should be paid to the supply chain and the role of integrated teams rather than the client / designer relationship.

4. The continuing focus on initial cost rather than whole life value was seen as key. In the public sector, the distinction between capital expenditure and operational budgets characterised the issue. Lack of knowledge sharing between professions could result in “partial” advice and guidance.

Here at the BuilderScrap office, we recently came across this interesting article on the HGTV Pro website.  This article explains how it is easier to cut costs to increase your margin than to raise prices in a sluggish market. 

With housing starts in the doldrums in some markets, home builders need to make every dollar count to remain cost-competitive while still providing top value. Builders can cut their construction costs in myriad ways, says Charles C. Shinn Jr., president of the Lee Evans Group/Shinn Consulting in Littleton, Colo., and all will pay off.

“If you can reduce construction costs by only $10 per cost code, you will significantly increase your profits,” he stresses. There typically are about 100 cost codes per house, creating $1,000 of increased profit per house. Even better, there are many ways to find that $10.
Cutting direct construction costs provides the most effective way to boost profits, he notes. Land costs and operating expenses are generally fixed, and it’s difficult to raise prices in a tight market. “You have the most control over these costs, and you need to attack them on all fronts to control and reduce them.” He points to at least 20 areas where costs can be cut:

1. Create target construction-cost budgets.
Develop a preliminary direct-construction cost budget for each cost code and design, and then estimate and specify to maintain that cost and profits. “Direct costs are the only variable in the pricing formula,” he says.
2. Improve your working drawings.
By making all drawings uniform and detailed, you avoid missing details and create consistency that ensures no change orders or lost productivity by crews.
3. Design and specify homes for your customers.
Survey customers to learn what they like (and don’t like) and what they are willing to pay for. Then tailor the homes to those preferences. “Fall out of love with your homes,” Shinn suggests, and give homebuyers what they want, not what you want to give them.
4. Analyze standard specifications.
Ensure they truly are standard and put an emphasis on the areas that customers perceive to create high value. Conduct a cost/benefit analysis to cut back where possible, and offer alternatives as options and upgrades. 5. Don’t overdo standard specifications.
“Extra amounts of standard features have diminishing value and eliminate potential areas for upgrades,” Shinn warns.
6. Change the level of specification between floors.
Create a more sumptuous look for the public first floor and cut back where possible on moldings, trim, door heights and other areas on upper levels.
7. Analyze low gross-profit plans.
Determine where the plans have excess specifications, and work to reduce those cost areas wherever possible.
8. Create a true purchase-order system to control all charges.
“Do not accept invoices, and pay only the purchase-order amounts you approved,” he says.
9. Issue complete construction-start packages prior to start.
Completeness ensures no change orders or redundancies in finishing each stage. However, this approach does require customers to make all selections before the project starts.
10. Improve estimating and purchasing.
Conduct your own in-house detailed quantity take-offs. “Don’t leave this to your trades and vendors,” Shinn warns. All agreements also should be documented, and they should be based on unit pricing instead of lump-sum bids.
11. Value-engineer your plans to ensure they are still efficient.
Consider new and alternative materials that may have been introduced and proven since the plans were drawn up.
12. Work with trades to eliminate inefficiencies.
Treat them well so they will help you maintain schedules, manage their work better and clean up and organize the site.
13. Conduct “As-Built Audits.
” These investigations allow the superintendent and estimator to ensure materials are being used correctly and the proper amounts are specified.
14. Gain control of construction-cost variances.
“These can equal or exceed profits,” Shinn warns. Using a purchase-order system will help document where variances occur. Analyze them to find why they arise.
15. Don’t get wed too closely to your trade contractors.
“Sacred cows cost a lot,” he says. Always obtain at least three competitive bids always, and be willing to release a job to a new trade contractor if he meets your criteria.
16. Question the engineers.
Evaluate the design of the structural system, trusses, floors and HVAC to ensure they continue to be the most efficient approaches.
17. Improve negotiating techniques with your vendors.
Do your homework and focus on the most important areas, Shinn says. These include payment and volume discounts, displays, sales training, collateral, delivery arrangements, backorder penalties, rebates and a host of other options.
18. Break up turnkey trades.
You can save as much as 15 to 25 percent if you buy materials and labor separately, he estimates. It creates more challenges for the superintendent, but it unbundles processes and drives out hidden costs.
19. Improve material inventory and control.
Create a system to protect delicate and fragile products, including entry doors, countertops and tubs, so damage doesn’t eat into profits. Monitor your Dumpster to ensure waste is not growing, and keep a close eye out for diverted materials. Be sure to return unused or damaged materials for credit rather than throwing it away.
20. Standardize your construction processes everywhere.
“Be consistent and reliable, efficient and effective,” he stresses. “Establish a culture of discipline.”

Controlling direct construction costs is critical, Shinn says. “In today’s housing slump, with the need to reduce sales prices to maintain volume, it is extremely important to reduce direct costs to maintain profit and become a superior profit builder.”

We thought this article was really interesting as now is a crucial time for everyone within the construction industry to manage their costs.  BuilderScrap can help cut construction costs, by lowering the amount of waste sent to landfill, as well as providing a source for low cost building materials.

BuilderScrap is all about sustainable construction, but what exactly does that mean?  This article from Construction News explores just that?

For the past fifteen years, sustainability has become a buzz word.  But the current financial downturn provides an opportunity for the construction industry to ask itself some serious questions and hopefully find some honest answers.

To add definition to sustainable construction we need to decide what it isn’t:

• An interchangeable word with environment.
• A competitor or comparable option to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
• A nice business add-on – good for marketing when things are going well.

But what is it?

• It’s a fundamental concept to be applied to the way businesses are operated.
• It expands on and supports existing business practice.
• There is no end to being a sustainable business. In the same way that businesses don’t attain a specific amount of profit and then say “well that’s it done, lets pack it all in now”.

The Strategy for Sustainable Construction, launched in June 2008, does not provide a definition for Sustainable Construction, but does make the link between the UK Government Sustainable Development Strategy and the construction industry.

Many construction companies use the triple bottom line approach to plan and report on their sustainable performance. There are many definitions for this, one of these from WRAP states ‘The triple-bottom line encompasses environmental responsibility, social awareness/responsibility and economic profitability.’

So in theory a construction company with well embedded sustainability strategy should be in a relatively stronger position in 2009, than a company that hasn’t.

Is there anything to suggest that this is the case?

There appears to be some limited evidence of sustainable performance providing improved financial returns, although overall there are few recent examples of statistical evidence.

SAM (Sustainable Asset Management) an independent asset management company published its 10th year assessment of corporate sustainability performance for the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes in September 2008. One of its findings was ‘SAM’s in-house and external academic empirical work suggests that there is a positive and statistically significant correlation between corporate sustainability and financial performance, as measured by stock returns.’

Are construction companies recognised for sustainable management performing better than others in the current economic climate? Again there is some evidence to suggest that this is the case, but not conclusively. By reviewing publicly available information it is possible to identify potential early trends.

But one fear in the current economic climate is that items such as sustainability would appear less relevant – perhaps as a result of limited understanding of the subject.

However, it seems better than first feared. Because of the current economic difficulties the UK Government has brought forward public spending projects in a bid to stimulate the economy.

Public funded projects are key means to the delivery of the Government’s sustainable development strategy and Strategy for Sustainable Construction. To be able to win work in these projects, companies will have to be able to demonstrate sustainable performance, by meeting sustainability performance targets. According to the Strategy for Sustainable Construction:

• New homes and schools are expected to be ‘zero carbon’ by 2016
• By 2012 a 50 per cent reduction target for waste to landfill (based on 2008 industry performance)
• All new homes built with English Partnerships and the Homes and Communities Agency to meet Code for Sustainable Homes Level 3 for water efficiency

Companies that have invested in their internal sustainability capabilities, from the top down should be in a position to demonstrate that they are suitable for these new projects. They will have past project performance as references, internal management mechanisms to demonstrate how targets will be delivered and external reporting of their sustainability performance over a number of years.

That is not to say that it is too late for other companies. All the requirements for sustainable management and performance expectation are readily available, especially in the public sector.

One thing is clear though and that is that there are still opportunities in construction in 2009 and delivery of these will require demonstrable sustainable performance.

Some more information from the Draft Strategy for Sustainable Construction. The purpose of the paper is to gain respondents views on the outlined proposals using qualitative data.

Q: Is target 5.2 stretching, achievable and realistic? If not, then please propose an alternative. Which organisations should be responsible for this target?

Target 5.2 proposed that 20% of all projects with a value in excess of £1 million should have used the Design Quality Indicators and Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) or equivalents and achieve an excellent rating, by the end of 2008.

1. There was a broad range of responses and no clear consensus on this proposed target. Some felt the target was insufficiently challenging; others felt it was unachievable.

2. Several questioned whether the target was appropriate, with a number saying it was very difficult for rural buildings to attain an “Excellent” BREEAM rating. Others questioned how the BREEAM target might be measured since the assessment was confidential between the client and the assessor. Others commented that BREEAM did not assess social
issues. There were questions about how the 20% of projects would be identified and whether a “blanket” £1m threshold was appropriate for all types of construction projects.

Another question from the now infamous sustainable construction draft strategy.  Please feedback to us on our BuilderScrap.com blog if you have an comments.

Q: What specific actions could the construction industry take to lead by example and procure projects more sustainably?

1. A significant proportion of respondents said this was an issue for clients. Indeed, some respondents said the construction industry had no role to play.

2. Many saw effective delivery of the Egan integration agenda as the key contribution the industry could make. Some respondents suggested Government could provide leadership here (some suggesting Government funding should be conditional on integration) and on whole life costing and sustainable sourcing of products and materials.

3. Some respondents pointed to the challenge of defining either sustainability or whole life costs or value. There was also a view that there should be two strategies – one for new build and one for refurbishment/renovation. A number of people welcomed the inclusion of off-site construction and saw this as a key way in which more sustainable construction could be delivered.

4. Concerns were expressed about the timber target in the absence of targets for other materials.

5. Some respondents emphasised the importance of whole life costing to the industry’s future. A number of responses pointed to the focus on initial price as being a key barrier to a more sustainable industry. There were suggestions that industry should work with Government to develop one or two mandatory / standardised approaches to Whole Life Costing (WLC). Some also called for a greater focus on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) / environmental reporting / environmental management in procurement decisions.

6. The need to ensure the industry and its customers had the right skills to understand sustainability in the procurement context featured in a number of responses.

Here at the BuilderScrap.com offices we’re still getting excited about the sustainable construction draft that we’ve been reading during the past month. Just to give the readers a quick overview of what we’ve been discussing;

This report analyses responses to the consultation on the draft Strategy for Sustainable Construction. The aim of the consultation was to gather views on the draft Strategy. 149 responses were received and comments analysed against each of the 28 questions in the consultation document. This report reflects the views of the respondents to each question
in sequence. Please feel free to read previous blog entries to understand the scope of todays question.

Q1: How can the Strategy be refreshed in future?

1. Respondents felt overwhelmingly that the Strategy needed to be tracked and refreshed in the future; and that the strong engagement between Government and industry and stakeholders should continue.

2. Some respondents suggested that progress be assessed independently and a range of organisations and individuals offered to be engaged in future reviews.

3. Views on the frequency of reviews ranged from continuous / organic reviews to a major review in seven years time. The median period suggested for reviews was 2-3 years.

BuilderScrap will keep you informed

We have just come across an interesting article here in the BuilderScrap office about how plumbers are the tradespeople most likely to offer environmental advice. The article was found here, have a read and let us know what you think.

More than eight in 10 plumbers would offer advice on environmental efficiency, says new survey.  Plumbers are the tradespeople most likely to offer their customers green advice, according to a new survey by the Energy Saving Trust.
More than eight out of 10 (81%) of plumbers said they would give energy efficiency advice. Carpenters came in at the other end of the scale, with only 27% saying they would advise their customers how to be more green.

81% of plumbers said they would give energy efficiency advice
Only 56% of builders said they would give energy efficiency advice, but 73% of electricians said they would. A total of 84% of the 241 tradespeople polled said they would like to be able to give environmental advice that their customers trusted.
Philip Sellwood, chief executive of the Energy Saving Trust, said: “Seventy-five per cent of people in the UK believe the best way to improve the energy efficiency of a home is when the builders are in, but until tradespeople have the knowledge, training and skills to be able to offer this expertise as second nature then they will be building in the dark.”

Remember that BuilderScrap can be used by all trades to pass on unused, surplus materials, including plumbing products.