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Keltbray is testing a new type of earth friendly concrete
Costain delivering net-zero in the Built Environment Costain is involved in the whole life cycle of projects. Here the focus is on the construction activity and how the construction phase is the Lara Young, the Costain Group piece of the jigsaw puzzle that brings design to life and plays a part in achieving net zero. It is not just what we need to build that needs to be sustainable, it is how we build it too. Sustainability and carbon champion Lara Young is Costain’s Group Climate Change Director and the winner of several industry awards, including Energy and Carbon Leader of the Year 2021, at the edie Sustainability Awards, and a Highways UK 2020 Associate Laureate award for her commitment for driving the climate change agenda in transport. At the COP26 Built Environment Day Lara explained how Costain has already acted and has set a long-term target to achieve net zero by 2035, at the very latest, with
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reduction plans and interim targets focused on design, materials, and plant fleet.
So how does Costain achieve a net zero plant fleet? Lara explains, “Collaborating with global manufacturers and supply chain on the machines of the future to accelerate trials and testing them before they come to market and speed up industry adoption. In the past few years, Costain has tried and tested over 35 industry firsts that are now being used across the wider industry.
The London Bridge Station Upgrade project, where Costain supplied advisory, concept development, programme management and maintenance services, used telematics to monitor the use of plant machinery and provided specific eco-operator training to the team working on site. Before the eco-operator training, the average monthly use of eco-mode was just 4%. Post training, telematics data over a fivemonth period showed an average eco-mode use of 33%, with some machines showing as high as 90%, an average increase of 29%.
