Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
huge generator of waste were detailed in
Chapters 9
and
11,
where we reviewed
each stage of the life cycle pertaining to the construction process and outlined the
mass balance model (see for example
Key Points 9.3
and
11.1)
. It was noted that the
construction industry consumes more raw materials than any other industrial sector
and is responsible for a significant proportion of the world's waste and carbon
dioxide emissions. In the UK alone, it is estimated that more than 100 megatonnes
of construction and demolition material ends up as waste every year, including a
significant amount of material delivered to sites and then thrown away unused.
Second, the construction industry is a vitally important industry. This
has already been reviewed at some length. In
Chapter 13,
we discussed how
construction is commonly regarded as the engine of economic growth and
illustrated the point with case studies from China, Japan and South Africa, and
in
Reading 5
we examined the idea further by exploring Bon's (1992) hypothesis
that a country's level of construction activity is closely related to its stage of
economic development. In purely quantitative terms, the contributions made
by construction to employment and GDP are quite significant. Construction
employs more than any other industrial sector - accounting for more than a
110 million jobs across the globe and creating an estimated 10 per cent of the
world's GDP (UNEP 2012a). The industry is not just important economically, it is
the key to the quality of life
as it produces the built environment and puts in place
the physical facilities and infrastructure that determine the degree of freedom and
flexibility that society may enjoy. Its products also have a long lifetime, typically for
anything up to one hundred years after construction. This puts it in a very different
league to, say, producers of photocopier paper, washing machines and cars
.
Finally, the most worrying reason that construction has been selected as
warranting a special case in the sustainability agenda is because of its perceived lack
of change. In nearly every other sector of the economy, technological developments
have fuelled changes in business attitudes. For example, the manufacturing industry
has become leaner, cleaner and quicker at all tasks. Yet, as we have pointed out at
several points throughout this topic, the construction industry is old fashioned.
It suffers from inertia and there is a distinct lack of inclination for change. The
problem was alluded to at some length in
Chapter 6,
where it was noted that
similar sentiments are echoed throughout the world. To take a European example,
a review of 30 market areas with high economic and societal value identified
construction as requiring urgent and coordinated action. To paraphrase the report,
the construction industry at national levels across the EU can be singled out as
lacking innovation. It is a market of few large players and many small businesses.
The owners of these businesses look for job opportunities in their local areas and
are not inclined to invest time or money into research and development. Their main
concern is to ensure order topics for the next 6 to 12 months. This has an impact
on the effectiveness of innovation, business strategy, design activities and training
requirements. As a consequence, the industry of the twenty-first century is still made
up of a high proportion of small contractors, who execute business plans across
short time horizons, and persist with traditional methods of work (EU 2007: 10).
Two years later a survey of the UK construction industry found a similar picture. It
