Sustainability and Remediation - Dealing with Contaminated Sites: From Theory Towards Practical Application - page 905

Wider project
design (Core)
stage

Is the wider project design set?

No

TASK: Use remediation design to influence
sustainability of detailed project objectives
and design

Yes

MILESTONE: Establish a sustainable
remediation strategy to embed within
the project design

MILESTONE:
Project design set

Glass ceiling

TASK: Select most Sustainable remedial
Option to deliver project objectives

Remediation
Implementation only
(Non-core)

MILESTONE: Complete
Remedial Options Appraisal

Fig. 20.6 Generic SuRF-UK framework 8

However, that is not a good reason to ignore the “additional” sustainability ben-
efit that might accrue from optimising the site remediation approach within the
scope set for it.

A possible concern is that considering sustainability in remediation adds an
unwelcome degree of complexity to decision making, and could add costs to reme-
diation projects. Clearly, it is important not to burden a project in planning with an
unreasonable information collection requirement. The logical way forward is to take
a tiered or stepwise approach to sustainability analysis, beginning with simple qual-
itative assessments, and only moving to more detailed assessments where a simpler
approach has not been able to yield clear decision support (“simple when possible,
complex when necessary”).
A tiered approach is essentially that the cheapest and least complicated
approaches to sustainability appraisal should be used in the first instance, with
more complicated appraisals only being used where these are unable to deliver a
clear finding. This is consistent with a series of key requirements for sustainability
appraisal tool development identified by Therivel ( 2004 ), including the need for:

• An appropriate point of trade-off comprehensiveness, rigour, transparency, user

friendliness and costs. The choice should depend on the decision that the tool is
informing.

• Efficiency in the tools used: the amount of time and effort they need as input

should be proportional to the benefits that they provide as output.

• Multi-purpose tools, i.e. tools that can be used for several different functions and

tools that bring together different disciplines; and