Our approach is proven to work.

What we need now is for organisations, clients and engineers to do the calculations to find out what the embodied carbon is within their building designs — both at the design stage and post completion.We need to be monitoring what is actually going into buildings, compared to what we think should be going in.

This means that contractors need to get on board as well.Ultimately, we’ll have to collate the data together as an industry, but benchmarks will help us learn, and guide us at the design stage..Creating a sustainable future — alignment of standards and guidance.

One of the key challenges we need to address in our quest for a sustainable future, is to align the various forms of guidance and advice coming into the industry from different sources.There are currently a number of different institutions involved, all representing different parties within the built environment.

While it’s positive they all have the same net zero goal, they offer different guidance.

RIBA represents architecture and CIBSE represents engineers.Timber should be used in low rise buildings such as residential, schools and retail, and could be introduced as upper storeys on a variety of taller builds mixed with other construction systems.

It is not the solution for all buildings, but it has its place within the industry and should be maximised within its constraints.. Technical areas that require further investigation and that may shift the public perspective of engineered timber include the adequate carbon accounting of root decaying and soil, and the impact of sustainable forest management on ecosystems..Article by Director of Sustainability.

, Head of Sustainability and Building Physics.Learn more about our approach to sustainable design.Click the 'play button' to listen in, or read.