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Understanding the carbon emissions of a building’s full life cycle is becoming increasingly more involved, with project managers able to lend insight into unseen environmental costs.
KnightFrank’s recent ESG Property Investor Survey highlighted the increasing importance of a building’s carbon footprint when it comes to making investment decisions.
With firms aware that their net zero 2030 goals are just around the corner and minimum energy standards coming into effect in different jurisdictions, 77 per cent of investors have now implemented minimum energy certification criteria for any new acquisitions, according to Knight Frank.
In addition, property developers are being urged to tackle the most difficult emissions to address: scope 3 emissions, which result from upstream activities like the manufacturing of building materials.
Colliers’ managing director of project leaders, Jon Barnes, is now drawing attention to the role of project managers in the endeavour of reducing the carbon footprint of construction.
It’s their job, he said, to “stay abreast of various building products and sustainability certifications and educate all of those involved in the construction process, from tradespeople to head contractors”.
Mr Barnes also ensures that Colliers’ project leaders team advocates for awareness regarding the environmental footprint of an asset long after the construction phase.
This can be important for both the investment and lease potential of a building, with commercial renters also increasingly looking to the efficiency of their workspace to help them meet decarbonisation goals.
But when it comes to construction, Mr Barnes argued that one of the most difficult yet important equations that a project manager can help uncover is the true sustainability of materials when factoring in the emissions created during transportation.
“While the role of the construction industry in addressing the rapid pace of climate change is becoming widely accepted, an emphasis on sustainability can reap perverse outcomes if critical details are overlooked,” Mr Barnes warned.
“Renewable materials such as post-tensioned concrete and timber are often showcased as bastions of sustainability, with the unseen or forgotten contributor to emissions being the transportation required,” he said.
Mr Barnes pointed to an instance when Colliers’ project leaders were able to discover that an all-timber construction was at risk of incurring a higher-than-intended level of emissions due to the transport of the timber via multiple processing plants from overseas.
“The use of a combination of timber and post-tensioned concrete, which appeared to be less sustainable at face value, delivered the best outcomes in terms of emissions reduction throughout the construction process and across the life cycle of the asset,” Mr Barnes said.
“The closer you can source building products, the better the outcome,” he advised.
Similarly, Mr Barnes noted that unnecessarily complex structures could add cost and environmental impacts to a building’s footprint.
The Colliers team has been working with School Infrastructure NSW (SINSW) to increase the use of modular building, which can enable a more efficient use of labour and materials, reduce cost and the carbon footprint of a project, and cut down on the normal construction time.
SINSW has recently found that embracing modular building is helping it to produce higher quality schools in less time, providing greater delivery certainty to its vendors with less impact on the environment and disruption to school operations.
When it comes to future building, Mr Barnes said that project managers should be playing an important role in clarifying the environmental impact of a building’s full life cycle.
“While significant, it is not enough to just embrace new innovative materials and techniques when those working in the built environment have a responsibility to ensure their projects mitigate as opposed to enhance the rapid pace of climate change,” he said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juliet Helmke
Based in Sydney, Juliet Helmke has a broad range of reporting and editorial experience across the areas of business, technology, entertainment and the arts. She was formerly Senior Editor at The New York Observer.
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