Sustainability Case Studies

Deloitte

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION EQUALS EXCELLENCE

Focus: Environmental education and training

Located in the heart of the City of London, Overbury’s fit-out of two office buildings for international accounting and consulting firm, Deloitte, progressed at the phenomenal rate of £1 million worth of work per week. At peak times there were 400 operatives on-site, including 30 specialist companies and the specification of finishes was second to none. Little time, you’d think, for environmental awareness and training. That’s where you’d be most definitely wrong.

Deloitte, keen to be green, used the project to make a statement of its environmental credentials. It employed Element 4, an environmental consultancy, to develop a sustainability charter for the project and imposed stringent requirements on all contracted firms. Project director Steve Osmond says:

The charter put big pressure on us to achieve BREEAM targets, monitor and minimise waste, and ensure that we and our sub-contractors procured materials from sustainable sources. The key was to get all the subbies to buy into the sustainability charter and work with us on hitting our targets.”

Now, this can be attempted and sometimes achieved by forcing compliance: but results are short lived and don’t get buy in. Instead, Overbury decided to educate all of its own operatives and its sub-contractors about the client’s environmental aspirations and how they could work together to achieve them.

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

Liz Collett, Overbury’s environmental manager, set up a series of workshops on site. These induction sessions covered a range of topics including sourcing FSC and PEFC certified timber; waste minimisation, reduction of packaging and recycling; and, energy saving measures. Sub-contractors were selected to undertake workshops to achieve ISO 14001 and put in place their own environmental management systems on the project. In addition, all Overbury managers were trained in-house to ensure they were up to date with all environmental legislation: this continues regularly at Overbury’s head office. Collett says:

This level of education, and inclusion, in something like sustainability was very new to many workers. They weren’t used to thinking about the impact of their actions, but if we were to hit our sustainability targets on the project they had to recognise their environmental responsibilities.

As an incentive to the sub-contractors we took them through their ISO 14001 training while they were on the job: they can now take that accreditation with them to future projects. With regards to our staff, including the managers, it was a relatively steep learning curve at times but everyone agreed that the workshops were invaluable in getting the job done to the client’s specifications and aspirations.”

TAKING TIME TO TRAIN

The speed of the project meant that everyone had to hit the ground running and any time wasted on superfluous inductions and training would be detrimental. Osmond says:

This project had some of the highest environmental requirements that I had ever worked to and we knew we’d all need some help. What the training did was give everyone a grounding in environmental responsibility and help them to understand what it was they were trying to achieve. It is common sense but people always work better when they see the bigger picture and understand their role within it.”

The Deloitte project ran smoothly and gained a BREEAM Very Good rating. As part of its commitment Overbury enrolled on the Considerate Contractors Scheme and scored an impressive 36 out of 40. Through good environmental training Overbury, its sub-contractors and waste contractor became the first to trial a recycling scheme for Corex (protection sheets); 99.5% of timber used was FSC or PEFC approved; 61% of waste was recycled; and materials used on-site, included carpet tiles with backing containing 85% recycled content, plasterboard with 84% and floor tiles with 70% recycled chipboard cores. Osmond says:

The project was one of the biggest that Overbury had ever undertaken at the time, and at times the extra pressure of these high environmental standards was daunting. However, the in-house, and especially the on-site training put us on the right track to make it a success. And stand us in good stead for future work with evermore demanding sustainability targets.”