Sustainable Business - Sustainability Leaders Awards

Sustainability Leaders Awards 2013 41/44 SUSTAINABLE BUILDING Line and the Heathrow Bus & Coach Station; the target is to "continuously increase" the proportion of passengers and staff that use sustainable transport to access the airport. And there's more. Almost all (99%) of the construction waste has been diverted from landfill. LED lighting for site boundaries will cut energy consumption and running costs in half. A collaboration with Balfour Beatty will provide water from boreholes under the terminal – quite a challenge in terms of excavation and treatment. And there's a 'construction academy', offering training and employment to local unemployed people. T2 has been a learning curve in terms of sustainable airport construction. In fact, initial plans for the terminal didn't require contractors to complete an environmental assessment. So a bespoke BREEAM assessment was developed, with 500 sustainability targets set for the building. This was far too many and was far too complicated to manage; so in the future the targets will be rationalised. ges said: What the jud g. This has picked in ild What a bu om the of things fr up a load them to d taken them Olympics an e bravest l.This was th another leve l kinds of ey added al try as th en already ect that was risk to a proj rminal 2 Heathrow Te demanding. r building nchmark fo will set a be e word. around th As the judges highlighted, "all kinds of risks were added to a project that was already demanding", which made this "the bravest entry". Of course, the terminal is not yet complete, but the initial data is promising. Computer modelling, for instance, shows that it is on track to meet the CO2 target for T2 to be "better than the requirements of Part L 2006 building regulations through energy-efficient design and renewable supply". Some of the plans for T2 have also been trialled in T5. Lower flow rates are being tested to improve water efficiency and changes to waste segregation and management in T5 have also lifted recycling rates up to 75%, compared with the airport's overall rate of 50%-60%. T2 will be a vehicle for communicating sustainability messages at Heathrow – both at a practical level (supply chain sustainability requirements have been updated to reflect the lessons from construction) and on a more general level (employees are signing up for tree planting sessions to understand more about the biomass boiler). Through development of the BREEAM airport assessment criteria, Heathrow also hopes to effect change among other airports. The judges concluded: "Like the Brent Civic Centre, this is another absolute beacon in its respective field. These projects are getting it. This is really about the new eco being economic not ecological. Excellent, excellent entries."

• Cover