Pain-free construction

With the current purge on spending in full flow, the Government is thoroughly assessing the requirement for any new construction projects. Yet this becomes more of a problem when it comes to the health sector. The UK needs well-conditioned, operating hospitals and as such requires new builds and infrastructure repairs to facilities that are already coping with demand greater than capacity.

The question thus for the Government is how these costly ventures can be achieved successfully, and kept within tight budgets. The answer now is to focus on the fine details of construction projects to find out where savings can be made.

Historically, the issue of waste was very much left to the building contractor to worry about. A client sourced the services of a reliable contractor, and they dealt with the waste arising through their own channels leaving a brand new build, and no waste.

Now, however, the subject of waste has become more of a political focus and the onus has shifted to the client as well. In the case of the health sector, this means NHS Trusts must now lead by example. This radical rethinking of waste as a problem for both client and contractor has major implications for NHS Trusts.

A number of public policy and legislative drivers focussing on construction waste have come into force which the sector must be aware of if it is to start generating the cuts required by government. Trusts should be adhering to the NHS Carbon Reduction Strategy, ‘Saving Carbon: Improving Health’. This sets carbon reduction targets for NHS Trusts. A prime contributor to this target is reducing construction waste. Every NHS Trust should be producing a Sustainable Development Management Plan outlining metrics and targets that need to be realistically achieved.

In addition, The Strategy for Sustainable Construction policy has set targets to halve the amount of construction, demolition and excavation waste sent to landfill by 2012, relative to a 2008 baseline. This works in correlation with the increases in Landfill Tax, which is set to rise annually from £48 per tonne in the financial year 2010/11 to £80 per tonne from April 2014, which could add significantly to overall construction costs if not carefully managed.

Site Waste Management Plan regulations place the responsibility for forecasting, managing and measuring waste for every project with a budget exceeding £300,000 squarely on the shoulders of the client and principal contractor. With this pressure in place, the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) has produced a document entitled Advice for NHS Trusts as construction clients has been produced to help advise Trusts on the ways that they can meet these stringent construction targets.

Divided into two parts, the document explains the business case for taking action and how, as a client, every NHS Trust can drive improvements by asking project teams to identify and adopt cost-saving actions. Part two outlines how best to engage with design teams and contractors to reduce construction waste through procurement, offering template wordings for informing project teams of outcome requirements for waste. These can then be embedded within a Sustainable Development Management Plan; Estate Management Plan and tender and contract documents.

Advice for NHS Trusts as construction clients also supports the Department of Health’s Good Corporate Citizen Model and the Health Technical Memorandum 07-07; Sustainable health and social care buildings: planning, design, construction and refurbishment. In short, it offers a concise, needed path to best practice regardless of project size, scope or budget.

Tackling waste in this way can make a real difference to the project costs. Take the example of the Barrhead Health and Social Care Centre, a £7m NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde development. The principal contractor is Graham Construction, a signatory to WRAP’s Construction Commitments: Halving Waste to Landfill voluntary agreement. The new building has a floor area of 5,700 sqm spread over three floors. Construction began in August 2009 and practical completion for the building is expected shortly.

NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde set waste targets for the project and reviewed the contract wording to incorporate model procurement requirements on waste and recycled content. Key to achieving their goal was working with the entire supply chain. On the construction site, Graham Construction implemented a number of actions in line with the Trust’s instructions.

To begin with, waste forecasts were calculated based on real available data giving a good indication of what savings the contract mandates will help achieve. Standard industry practice forecasts that the material wastage on such a development would be in the region of 3,011 tonnes, equivalent to £191,000 of material purchasing costs. Targeted practice for the Barrhead Health and Social Care Centre was set at 2,575 tonnes, costing some £133,600. By pursuing targeted reductions in wastage rates for a few specific materials, the potential saving is £57,400.

The waste disposal cost savings are also significant, and can similarly be reduced. Segregating waste at the site, combined with the forecast reduction in waste of 436 tonnes, gives a predicted disposal cost saving of £48,400. The labour and site costs needed to achieve these savings were calculated to be £28,000. Even so, adding together the material waste savings and waste disposal costs – and subtracting the labour and site costs – the entire project is remains on target to save approximately £77,800 by completion date, not to mention the associated environmental saving of having to send far less waste to landfill.

This is an example of savings that can be made before a site opens. What is less well documented, but no less important in terms of avoiding waste, is healthy logistics; the very arteries delivering vital materials where needed. This is one area where undiagnosed problems can lay waste to budgets.

St Barts and The London NHS Trust are redeveloping two hospitals under one of the largest Public Private Partnerships in Europe. The main contractor is Skanska, who have previously worked with WRAP offering guidance. St Barts used the London Construction Consolidation Centre for this project, managed by construction logistics specialists Wilson James who also were the on site logistics specialists.

A variety of logistics strategies were adopted on site. A zero waste packaging solution was agreed with suppliers whereby a reusable box pallet was developed and used by the lighting contractor. This protected the materials and resulted in zero waste. An off-site manufacturing policy was successful used, with pre-installed services such as water, wiring and power being prepared away from the development to help reduce waste and drastically cut the installation time.

The site also made use of a Construction Consolidation Centre (CCC), whereby project materials were gathered at a convenient location offsite. This allowed for the congestion to be cut around the extremely restricted site and thus reduced associated CO2. Required deliveries from the CCC were then made available within a 48-hour cycle, reducing on site storage.

Work continues apace on this £1bn development, but already the key achievements speak for themselves. A huge 95 percent of waste has been diverted from landfill. A total of 2,229 fewer delivery vehicle journeys were made to the site as well – a 74 percent reduction representing an 18 tonne saving in carbon emissions. Meanwhile delivery accuracy to St Barts consistently hit between 95 and 100 percent of targets to arrive within 15 minutes before or after intended targets thanks to the CCC, which also helped half plasterboard waste through better preparation.

Such a comprehensive logistics strategy will lead to a cleaner, safer and more efficient working environment and helps make the construction site a good neighbour, with minimum interruption to the life of the city. And in a time of cuts, this will be a cut that will matter more then the rest.