Recognising climate change and biodiversity protection
18th Jul, 2019
SDS have today officially signed up with 18 other companies to the Building Services Engineer Declaration. Demonstrating our recognition that climate change and biodiversity protection are two of the most serious issues of our time.
Buildings and construction play a major part, accounting for nearly 40% of energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions whilst also having a significant impact on our natural habitats.
For everyone working in the construction industry, meeting the needs of our society without breaching the earth’s ecological boundaries will demand a paradigm shift in our behaviour. Together with our clients, we will need to commission, design and maintain buildings, cities and infrastructures as indivisible components of a larger, constantly regenerating and self-sustaining system in balance with the natural world.
We will seek to:
- Raise awareness of the climate and biodiversity emergencies and the urgent need for action amongst our clients, collaborators and supply chains
- Advocate for faster change in our industry towards regenerative design practices and a higher Governmental funding priority to support this
- Establish climate and biodiversity mitigation principles as a key measure of our industry’s success: demonstrated through awards, prizes and listings
- Share knowledge and research to that end on an open source basis
- Evaluate all new projects against the aspiration to contribute positively to mitigating climate breakdown, and encourage our clients to adopt this approach
- Upgrade existing buildings for extended use as a more carbon efficient alternative to demolition and new build whenever there is a viable choice
- Include life cycle costing, whole life carbon modelling and post occupancy evaluation as part of the basic scope of work, to reduce both embodied and operational resource use
- Adopt more regenerative design principles in practice, with the aim of providing building services engineering design that achieves the standard of net zero carbon
- Collaborate with clients, architects, engineers and contractors to further reduce construction waste
- Accelerate the shift to low energy and nearly net zero energy in all our work
- Minimise wasteful use of resources in our building services engineering design, both in quantum and in detail.
Get involved and sign up now Building Services Engineer Declaration.
