Celebrating success along the way to net zero
When considering the built environment’s journey to net zero, David Symons, at WSP considers it essential to celebrate success. “It may seem daunting but if you look back,” he says, “you can see some really great progress that the industry has been making.”
For example, across the industry it is now completely routine to measure carbon in building designs and there is much more emphasis on thinking about building reuse and refurbishment rather than demolishing and starting again. “It's also very routine that our teams are now designing with heat pumps rather than gas boilers.” says Symons, “PAS 2080 is a big part of WSP. So the built environment should celebrate all of the progress we’ve made so far.”
However, Symons also highlights that the industry must, of course, recognise that there is still a huge amount to do at a faster pace if there’s going to be any real chance of delivering net zero by 2050. “There are some really big challenges ahead with decarbonizing all of our infrastructure standards, such as decarbonizing the materials that the built environment uses.”
One of the key factors to achieving these goals, says Symons, is around growth. “The companies that deliver on net zero ambitions faster will grow faster. Net Zero is the innovation and growth opportunity of the 21st century because we’re in a competitive landscape and people want to work for companies and sectors that are delivering change and having a positive impact.”
Within WSP, Symons is the leader of Future Ready, which aims to see the future more clearly across climate, society, technology and resources, and then challenge WSP’s 70,000 people to advise and design for that future as well as today.
“WSP has committed to halving the carbon in the design and advice that we give to our clients by 2030. When we work with the industry, the work that we do directly contributes to organisations meeting their own net zero commitments.”
At the heart of any company’s net zero approach, argues Symons, should be a large focus on people: “Attracting and keeping great people by having a clear purpose that they can feel part of is really important. Creating a prosperous, sustainable carbon economy really matters to people when they consider the values of who they want to work for.”
Symons also acknowledges that with many organisations having made net zero commitments worldwide, it is now on to the more challenging phase of delivering on these, especially within an organisation of the scale of WSP: “It’s one thing to set a strong science-based target. It is much harder to create all of the governance and delivery to make that happen. For WSP, the biggest challenge is how we drive that change across 70,000 people in 60 markets, across our culture and in the skills that we’re providing. And balancing that alongside cost and quality, whilst recognising that we need to do this at pace.”
Part of Symons’s role focuses on aligning net zero with WSP’s advice and design, and how that is then scaled across the wider profession. He helped set up Pledge to Net Zero, an industry programme created to take fast action on carbon emissions. It now has 200 members, who have collectively cut greenhouse gas emissions by a million tonnes from their baselines. At New York Climate Week this autumn, WSP also hosted the launch of three draft ways the engineering and environmental sectors can estimate carbon in their advice.
This industry collaboration is crucial to success, says Symons, especially within a global organisation such as WSP: “We have a global structure of net zero delivery across our buildings teams, our transport teams, our energy teams and our industry teams. They are sharing knowledge and sharing practical experience of designs which is so valuable.”
WSP’s global profile also helps clients with national regulations, says Symons: “We can help join the dots in a way that also goes beyond national regulations. There is a temptation to say that governments have to drive this industry change. That’s one tool for progress, but it is by no means the only one.”
WSP has invested significantly with digital partners around the latest technologies, such as AI software, but stresses the importance of new technologies being integrated as part of a wider solution: “Digital is part of the answer of course, but there’s so much about people, culture and communication. We need to make greater progress on BIM, data and technology, but we also need to focus on how we integrate.”
“I think there's definitely an opportunity to do more around asset tagging and providing ways to make it easy for people to have the confidence to reuse materials. We also need to get cleverer in terms of storing carbon data.”
Symons believes it's only a matter of time before the built environment has to report the carbon in its advice and designs as well as its corporate footprint. There will be challenges around integrating that data, making sure that it’s consistent, reliable, comprehensive and that it's stored well.
Central to progress, Symons adds: “There is a huge job to do on culture and skills, alongside the tools themselves. I think there is a key role amongst business leaders just to give our people the confidence that they can be doing things differently.”
At the heart of this approach, argues Symons, is collaboration with purpose. “Everything we design is for use by people,” he points out, “so the human element is really important to consider. It’s possible to become entirely focused on net zero in isolation, and we need to remember to integrate it together with other initiatives so that it is a simple message to our people and industry.”
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