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 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

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%.

In 2020 Costain introduced the use of telematics to equip each of its complex delivery projects to meet a 20% plant machinery idling reduction target and to become 100% emission free by 2035, as part of its Climate Change Action Plan.

In collaboration with all major plant and machinery supply chain partners we coordinated a contractual cross-industry plant data agreement and standard to ensure projects would benefit from a consistent and coherent data set and collection process to deliver sustainable business models and reduce carbon emissions and cost

The second part of this and the bigger of the two is we are not waiting for those machines of the future to act. In parallel, Costain is driving behaviour change to tackle idling as the emissions generated represent a significant footprint during construction phase.

From what we have seen across the industry, idling times average at 45% - 50% which means the engine is running when the vehicle isn’t moving. It is simply turning off the engine when it does not need to be on that will reduce emissions. We are driving behavioral change to bring down unnecessary idling and using the data to inform further change to help sustain the reduction and stop idling completely.

Until then, we continue to actively encourage behaviour that ensures the operation of the plant machinery is carried out in the most efficient and effective way possible. Data shows that in the last five months on the Tideway East project, in which Costain and its joint venture partners are working to make London’s sewerage network fit for the 21st century and help prevent the millions of tonnes of sewerage pollution discharge into the river each year, has achieved an 11% reduction in its idling rate – this will be the equivalent saving of carbon emissions of 20 round trip flights from Beijing to New York.

From what we have seen across the industry, idling times average at 45% - 50% which means the engine is running when the vehicle isn’t moving. It is simply turning off the engine when it does not need to be on that will reduce emissions. We are driving

It is not just about Costain using clean energies in our plant and machinery fleet, we are part of the full life cycle and helping to shape a clean energy future proven by our work with the UK’s industrial clusters and on carbon capture and storage. We recognise more needs to be done, at pace. At Costain we are committed to ensuring we follow through on what we have already set out to do by supporting our clients and supply chain partners in the race to net zero.”