Episode 17 – Part 3: The Built Environment, Carbon and Sustainability with Ian Boyd, Arc Consulting

The following transcript is autogenerated and may contain errors.

Matt Nally 

What are the what are the key issues you see around the projects you work on around carbon and buildings? Is it purely an ageing building stock aspect, or is it more about how we’re designing and building new projects? And yeah, what are the is it also around the sort of the governance aspects in terms of how we have to have to report on things or Yep, open question, I think a big one. But

Ian Boyd  

yeah, and from the outset, I am not a carbon expert. I’m not a BIM specialist I. So I look on from the point of view as someone who’s been involved in a development project, perhaps around the public health community space side, certainly around the ecology and landscape design side. And so we get involved in carbon discussions around carbon measurement. The focus, generally, from my perspective, anyway, tends to be on the efficient operation of the individual business unit. So how it things like its insulation, things like its renewal, is there any renewables plugged into it. So that kind of basics and working on a retrofit project recently, it really brought home to me people that are far, far more than I do, just these very basic things about that proper balance between insulation and ventilation in buildings, draft exclusion, very simple opportunities for retrofit renewables, if they’re not already on the site, are just a bit like we’re talking about with the Swift boxes. And they’re just fundamental. They’re just absolute basics, around efficient energy management of buildings. And therefore, it’s a carbon discussion, that these kinds of really essential things should be just part of the way that we think about building design from the outset. And increasingly, that is the case, of course. So in terms of building technology, again, from the point of view of a layman entirely, it seems to be becoming more and more sophisticated. One of the interesting things about that, I think, particularly in industrial settings in those kind of common or managed settings where you have a set of tenant businesses, or you have an investment property might be, let’s say, for example, a shopping centre, there’s we’ve worked with investment managers quite a bit is at that point where you have a, an, a Resource Management Facility around data collection, the carbon is only one part of that energy and water waste. All of these ultimately have a carbon function, of course, is the sharing of that data. So I think this is something that we can do much better on is the way that the data collection from individual properties from installations within those properties, collectively aggregated around in the state that that data is shared with the tenant community or with the community of whoever it is using that site, the more that we can actually say, Well, this building is performing at this level in terms of its overall carbon management. That’s above or below what we expected. Then you’re beginning again to open a conversation just as we talked about with wildlife where we can say, well, I’ve got some ideas about that I’ve got some things I think I could contribute to this that might, let’s test them out. And let’s see what happens. The metrics and data collection can be fantastically valuable. Once they become a commons. If we share with far too tight with that kind of data, sometimes that data is collected, and never seen. Again, it’s just collected for no apparent purpose. But if we can collect building performance, development, performance data around carbon, energy, water waste around this collective sustainability, kind of bundle, and find ways of sharing it with that community of residents or businesses, then we’re going to again, find that there will be great ideas, shared projects, things will move on new ideas will emerge. But I think we have to be more engaging. It’s a technocratic business, because it’s a complex area that I don’t pretend to fully understand at all. And that has to be recognised. This isn’t just a free for all. But once that data has been the capture of the relevant data has been designed, then it should become a commons that should be in a repository where I know I can find it. And it’s presented to me in a way that I can understand. And I think that’s possible, I think it’s possible on any development, to have that visible to the performance of your building in terms of perhaps even boil down entirely intent. I think building performance data collection, data sharing is one whole thing that could be fascinating to improve. And some places are doing this we my colleague Nigel and I went to Gibraltar recently to talk with water hosting a big meeting. And then this was one of them is a fascinating place where land is at such a premium. It’s It’s extraordinary. So the built environment is very condensed, very concentrated. And they’re beginning to talk about sophisticated building design and and the sharing of the data that comes from that in such a way that we can learn the next iteration gets better the next iteration gets better retrofit solutions emerge within those communities. So there’s a whole bunch of stuff around that. I think Matt would be helpful for us to explore.

Matt Nally  

Yes. Something I saw you discuss. It was around not with sort of potentially collecting the wrong metrics. I don’t remember it’s around ESG or something that’s been 10 in terms of the biodiversity aspect. And the well being aspects with buildings, what what are you seeing, that are the metrics for perhaps we’re focusing on in the wrong way or that the metrics we’re not even looking at at all, that would make a big difference to those things.

Ian Boyd  

I think it’s more that they’re siloed. I think it’s the data we collect, particularly the way that sustainability indicators and metrics are set out, whether that’s whatever performance metric you’re working with, whether this is your ESG returns, or other forms of return to an accrediting body or a compliance organisation, they are inevitably siloed. So you will have waste you will have water, you will have energy of different forms of energy, you may have public almost I’ve never seen a human health one in any of those categories. Hard wants to deal with but which should be there. Bng, or the the assessment of ongoing cumulative gains around biodiversity units may well be in there, or at least, the reamp data will probably be in there. But they will all be siloed and treated separately. The one of the big issues and we’ve talked about this a little bit already is and again, this is something that a conventional development and construction programme finds very difficult to do. Because it is an incentive, it’s an additional task is to aggregate all of those metrics is to pull them all together in a more qualitative, warm data, kind of fashion. But I am very deliberately asking myself questions about waste management and biodiversity. Well, how can they be connected? Well, they are connected, I’m going to build a communal food composting site, I’m going to do it in such a way that it’s actually become a superb habitat well for a whole bunch of urban wildlife. So straightaway, I’ve blamed two credits for that one installation, in the same way we talked about in the case of Build, that I’m going to retain as much material on site as I possibly can and wipe out all of that carbon expenditure on those unnecessary journeys and Fuel points. I’m going to keep it all there. But I’m going to create a space that’s better for people and better for wildlife. Well, that’s a whole bunch of metrics and one simple design, the reintegrating metrics into a combined approach to project design is something that I think we need to do, we’re encouraged more and more to separate them out. And when you work on a on a team and a development team, there will be a separate console for every single one of those metrics without any doubt at all. And we might see one another, but we might not want to. So the way that these development projects and manage needs this idea of deliberately asking these provocative questions, they’re kind of, it’s a sort of thing that if you’re interested in creative thinking, and the sort of Edward de Bono kind of stuff, these are the sort of exercises you used to do takes two seemingly unrelated objects sticking together and look for something interesting that comes from that. And that’s what we should be doing your metrics, taking that water, that attenuation or water supply metric and sticking it alongside this human wellbeing and this carbon and this biodiversity metric and crunching them together and saying, Well, how can I get multiple benefits with one single action? What What am I doing wrong? Why ever, it’s very inefficient in space, because development tends to follow metric in such a way that you have a space allocated water, a place allocated for waste, space allocated for energy, space allocated for biodiversity, and a space allocated for people in general outdoors. Well, that tends to create sprawl. And that and that sprawl is endemic in the UK, because we got plenty of space UK is wide, I don’t know 80% rural, still the Isle of Wight where I work here is 9% rural, even though you know, we kind of constantly have conversations about concrete concrete over the country. So it’s just nonsense. You know, it’s just ludicrous, because it’s never going to happen, partly because of the existing pattern of environmental designations and Ascott designations. Though, consequently, sprawl is really easy. It’s really to creep out and metrics drive sprawl, do we need to pull this back in? Like we’re saying earlier, make smaller gardens, create beer, public spaces, but make those public spaces incredibly lumpy and interesting and strange and unusual, provocative and fascinating. Rather than just having acres of dead flat if that were the least efficient use of space? Obviously, it’s just a flat surface. So that’s, that’s make taller buildings as well. Why are all our buildings so small? I do not understand it. We keep making tiny buildings. But I think weirdly, yeah, bringing metrics together around ultimately a carbon conversation because an efficient ecological system is carbon beneficial, because of the way that it cycles, nutrients and so on. There’s all sorts of benefits around it. So let’s call it a carbon compensation, if that helps crunch the metrics together and deploy them in the way that we design and manage the places that we are building in such a way that we that we will remove this tendency to sprawl, we bring things closer, much closer together, much closer proximity and generate a much more active, healthy, interesting and fulfilling play. is to live or work.

Matt Nally 

Is that is interesting I’m now slightly thinking of a mini film, I suppose a documentary on Netflix called the biggest little farm. I don’t know if you’ve seen that. It was really lovely it was it was it basically how everything feeds into his into each other. When he talks about all the metrics being looked at, together and how they interrelate and so on, basically, on this farm, they, they wanted to create a, I think it was 200 acres. They had a lot of investments put into it, but they, they didn’t want to be a farm that was we just grow one type of apple and sell that they wanted, they grow 70 types of plums, and you know, all these different things, and you know, apples and the sheep and the pigs and the chickens and all this type of stuff. And it was all designed to sort of sustain itself, you know, so the, I don’t know they had too many snails in the orchards, the ducks went and ate that the droppings from that then fertilise, the fertilise the ground. And that, in turn supported something else. And, and it took them a while to get that balance. It was I think, three years at least before the balance started to flow nicely. And then seven years overall, where everything really had its natural rhythm again. Yeah, and it just looks amazing, looks really healthy. And I think it ties in with what you’ve been saying about building these better environments, for biodiversity for wellbeing, and how it all starts to prosper very nicely once you start the Emotiv foster that environment and support it.

Ian Boyd 

Yes, exactly. And there are lots of interesting parallels with forest gardening with permaculture all sorts of very interesting parallels. And we can learn from these ideas in the way that we build up and landscaping just as you were saying, by very deliberately filling all the niches when we do urban landscaping is very, we tend to either go through canopy, so we just plant trees and sticks, that will just come up with nothing underneath. Or we just do the understory, which is just the kind of shrub layer, or we just do that herbaceous layer. Instead, we shouldn’t do all of those, we should be combining all of them. So that, but that will take three or four years to shuffle about until it’s found its balance. And after that it pretty much looks after itself. So they absolutely this idea of a very concentrated and very intentional design, to pull metrics in real life close together in very close proximity to deliver cumulative gains is is absolutely how we should be approaching the built environment, the places where we live and work. It’s very efficient, it releases space for other things, suddenly, the development is actually got 30% Extra to play with, what do we do with that? Maybe we do nothing with it. Maybe there’s an interest in collaboration with a civic partner around this use of space. Who knows, maybe set aside for bng offsets from somewhere else, something I have major problems with that, let’s just say. And then suddenly, it’s a source of income, you know. So there’s all sorts of interesting ways when we think about space efficiency, and space efficiency is carbon efficiency as well, of course. So it is pulling things together, concentrating impacts, heterogeneity over homogeneity, and a tight design approach to even the smallest bases. That’s the key to this.

Matt Nally

Nice. Thank you for coming today. And I found it really interesting. Like going through everything there’s a lot more think we could talk about for hours I’d love to. But thank you for sharing your thoughts and if anyone wants to get in touch to learn more about you know, what you do and how they can potentially work with you on different projects. They’re on how did they get in touch

Ian Boyd 

so they can get in touch with me directly on email and my email is in at ARC hyphen consulting.co.uk Have a look at the Ark biodiversity and climate website you’ll find all our contacts there have a look at the article logy site as well and you’ll find us there on numbers are up there as well. So you’ll track us down anyway, if you put in our kind of like your finders, don’t worry. And we’re always very happy to talk to anyone about this kind of stuff, finding new and interesting ways. And of course we always learn from the folks that we work with. We always come away having to do a better job.

Matt Nally 

Awesome. Okay. Thank you very much for coming on. Okay, thank you.