Sustainable building construction for structural engineers

摘要

There are no prescriptive methods which can be adopted for ensuring sustainable development. Instead it is important to understand what sustainable development means to you and your clients, and to use whole life thinking and high quality information to inform your decision-making. It is generally operational environmental impacts which have the greatest effect and as a priority, the design should seek to minimise these. Where possible, consideration should be given to extending the life of buildings by renovation and refurbishment, and associated with this, designing for flexibility to extend building lifetimes and for demount-ability to encourage future reuse and recycling of products and materials. The construction industry is characterised by long supply chains, and it is therefore important to engage with other organisations about the goal of sustainable development. This can mean, for example, selecting responsible contractors who have embraced sustainable development principles, rather than simply accepting the lowest price. In the UK there is a growing recognition of the importance of sustainability, and government is taking its responsibilities very seriously. We are therefore beginning to see more projects designed to address this, increasing incentives and penalties, and more support through design data and software tools. Structural engineers should certainly be aware of the broad principles of sustainable construction, and have an important part to play in what must be treated as a multi-disciplinary, integrated treatment of the issues.