5 minutes with Simon Corbey

Through mutual connections within the industry, Collingwood’s Head of Building Products, Mark Goldsmith, had the opportunity to sit down with creator and CEO of Alliance for Sustainable Building Products, Simon Corbey.

Having started the organisation in 2011, it now holds 155 active members and continues to grow.  It’s no surprise, given the amount of relevant, timely, and needed projects that they’re undertaking.

Here’s what they discussed:

Mark: Sadly, the industry is often viewed as a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to product innovation, Simon. You’ve been heavily involved in working with manufacturers, along with the wider construction industry, on this subject. What’s your view on how Building Products is evolving?

Simon: The industry is innovating all the time, but importantly it is also getting better at collaborating. We’ve just completed an Innovate UK project, working with the demolition industry and the supply chain, to help overcome the barriers to steel reuse; so, taking steel out of buildings and reusing it in retrofits or new builds. An Environmental Product Declaration by Cleveland Steel and Tubes on reused steel demonstrates that steel reuse offers a 96% carbon saving over new steel and often a cash saving, so a win-win.

There has been lots of innovation around offsite and modular construction. We published our Mass Timber Insurance Playbook last year, written by insurance experts, with input from Eurban and Gardiner and Theobald, which aimed to enable equitable insurance for mass timber buildings. A US version is being launched this month. We are relaunching the Playbook on 4^th December in a free webinar, as it has now been endorsed by the Association of British Insurers, ABI and the RISCAuthrority. We support greater use of biobased products in our homes and commercial buildings and there are lot of innovations in this area like Gutex Pyroresist, an ignition-resistant, non smouldering rigid wood fibre insulation, which is classified as fire-retardant according to DIN EN 13501-1 in Euroclass C.

Mark: You’ve worked with Westminster County Council recently. My understanding is that councils who’re more cash-rich are becoming increasingly vocal with suppliers need to prove their sustainability credentials. The need for manufacturers and suppliers to provide Environment Product Declarations (EPD) is becoming more than a tick boxing exercise.  From your experience, what advice can you provide people in gaining EPD’s to ensure they’re not left behind?

Simon: Yes, we hosted a webinar with Ian Poole at Westminster City Council in September, where he detailed the council’s approach to whole life carbon and the circular economy. I was pleased that Ian confirmed that a planning application had been turned down by the Council, on the basis of a poor circular economy statement, which is an interesting precedent and shows that developers must now get better at addressing the circular economy in their plans. This webinar and the write up are free resources from our website. Yesterday, we hosted a webinar entitled EPD 101 in collaboration with RICS WBEF, which will be available on our website in a few weeks. At this webinar, ASBP Chair Mark Lynn detailed the manufacturer’s case for EPD, stressing that there is a lot of valuable learning to be had from the process. Our board member and LCA guru Dr Jane Anderson talked us through the basics of EPD and how to interpret them. Making statements about your product, based on data in an EPD, helps meet the Green Claims Code and means you cannot be accused of greenwash, as they must be independently, third party verified.

The direction of travel is clear, with many countries mandating whole life carbon assessments, thus requiring EPD. We know the UK government are considering legislating for WLC and I suggest it is just a matter of time before it is mandated here in the UK.

Mark: I’ve completed some work with manufacturers who’ve looked to bring leaders into their businesses to create a recycled division.  Back in 2016, you were heavily involved in creating the first edition of the London Circular Economy Route Map. This involved educating manufacturers into reviewing their outlook to “flogging” materials and products. Added to this, the term, “embodied carbon”, is now a reasonably well-known term, albeit often just applied to the operational and end of life phases and thermal properties of products. How are manufacturers changing their viewpoint to recycling spent products and how they sell this concept on throughout the supply chain?

Simon: We cannot achieve Net Zero targets without using circular economy strategies and solutions to reduce embodied carbon. We are running a Reuse Now campaign, which has conducted deep dives over a range of products, looking at over-coming barriers to reuse. This is sponsored by Cleveland Steel and Tubes, Optima, Excess Materials Exchange, Reusefully, WKW and Circuland. I am chairing our Reuse summit later this month on the 14^th November at the Building Centre. This area is generating a lot of innovation and the development of new tools and metrics. Manufacturers on the whole are getting much better at considering the whole life cycle of their product. Many have introduced take back schemes, many have increased the recycled content of their products, but there is still a long way to go here. Some new markets have evolved for reused products, such as raised access flooring and constructional steel and Reuse Hubs are beginning to make this process more streamlined. Reusing a product means its embodied carbon is limited to just the transportation and repair, so they can have a substantial effect on lowering whole life carbon.

Mark: And on the recyclable properties of products throughout the supply chain, you’re increasingly working with demolition contractors in reusing existing products.  What type of projects are you getting involved in and how are you ensuring contractors are speaking with demolition businesses?

Simon: We have always said the circular economy can only be implemented if the end-of-life specialists, the demolition/deconstruction experts, liaise with the designers/architects. This is why we have teamed up with Institute of Demolition Engineers (IDE) to work with them to see how we can shift the industry to deconstruction and reuse and to upskill the design industry in designing for deconstruction and reuse. The NFDC are members with us, alongside many leading architects. Our Technical Director, Dr Katherine Adams is our resident expert here. She also runs her company Reusefully that specialises in pre-demolition or refurbishment audits, to make sure that the reuse potential is maximised. More developers are recognising the imperative to maximise reuse in their asset management and redevelopment plans and we are joined by Grovesnor, British land and Lazari Investments at our Reuse Summit. If you are unable to join us, we shall be writing it up and posting it on our website.

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