Our Climate Response

The World Green Building Council states that 11% of the world’s global energy related carbon emissions come from the materials and construction process, and some 50% of a building’s embodied carbon can come from the building’s structure.

At SWH, we are constantly having conversations about what else we can do to reduce our environmental impact as a responsible business, as well as support our clients in doing the same.

Our Environmental Policy details key sustainability objectives and outlines the direction that we are heading. This policy is reviewed at least every 12 months and is underpinned by our ISO 14001 certification.

Objectives include:

• working towards net zero by 2045
• offering embodied carbon calculations
• monitoring and reducing resource consumption

We are committed to reducing carbon emissions to achieve net zero by 2045.

We recognise that it is more than a commitment. Action is imperative.

Our two key targets are:

• Reach net zero carbon emissions for Scope 1 and Scope 2 by 2040.
• Reach net zero carbon for Scope 3 emissions by 2045.

We have been monitoring our impact for years, which has allowed us to use 2016 as our baseline for reporting and tracking our emissions. Since then, we have been resolute in implementing a range of specific environmental management measures, including continued monitoring of our resource consumption, recording transport data, delivering sustainability training to all staff, and developing further sustainability services to assist our clients with their own sustainability goals.

Learn more in our detailed Carbon Reduction Plan.

Scott White and Hookins are signatories to both Civil Engineers Declare and Structural Engineers Declare.

As part of this, we are actively upskilling our engineers, developing our processes and ensuring our technology and software is rapidly able to quantify the embodied carbon associated with our designs.

Our Engineers Declare declaration includes:

• Raise awareness of climate and biodiversity changes
• Advocate faster change
• Establish mitigation principles
• Share knowledge
• Evaluate existing buildings for extended use, whenever a viable choice
• Upgrade existing infrastructure, where possible
• Whole life carbon modelling
• Collaborate with clients, architects, engineers and contractors to reduce waste
• Adopt regenerative design principles
• Accelerate shift to low embodies carbon
• Minimise wasteful resources in our designs both in quantum and in detail

Our Sustainable Engineering Working Group (SEWG) consists of senior Sustainability Consultants and Chartered Engineers.

We meet regularly to ensure that eour staff are trained and equipped with the latest knowledge and technology, to deliver our projects with sustainability as a focus. The role of SEWG drives:

• identifying embodied carbon as an essential driver of our designs
• a continued holistic and practice wide review of all technical structural specifications
• integrating carbon assessments and calculations into our workflows using modern technology on our projects
• the identification of opportunities for immediate improvement on our client’s projects, in regard to embodied carbon reduction
• developing and implementing company-wide training to upskill all staff with respect to sustainable design and carbon reduction

The SEWG will continue to push the conversation to ensure that we are providing the very best design and advice on our projects to minimise environmental impact, as well as implementing best practice throughout the company.

We are committed to helping our clients find environmentally positive solutions.

We do this by having a comprehensive briefing document that feeds into our ISO 14001 Environmental Management System (EMS) to promote sustainable design decisions at the earliest stage of the process. The ethos is that costs to implement remain lowest, when compared to the potential positive design gain. Importantly, it aims to promote discussion in fundamental areas of Civil and Structural design, on typical building projects. Every project draws on this to offer innovative sustainable engineeringsolutions.

We can help you with:

• Sustainable engineering and design – receive design suggestions for your project, from the outset, that do not cost the Earth.
• BREEAM Certification – let us guide your project to achieve its BREEAM requirements, whether it is a non-domestic new construction, refurbishment, domestic, or an in-use project.
• Sustainability Statements – work with us from an early stage to identify how your project will meet the local authority’s policy requirements.
• Carbon Reduction Plans – let us assist you with your own operational carbon reduction journey, discussing your company’s Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, and to create your own Carbon Reduction Plan.