We had an incredible afternoon on Friday the 18th October, where industry professionals came together to discuss defining the steps we can take to elevate the use of the Circular Economy Statements and the Pre-Demolition Audits from compliance tools to design tools. A big thank you to our expert panellists: Tessa Devreese, Gilli Hobbs, Francesco Ferrari, Olivia Daw, and Elaine Toogood for guiding such insightful discussions! 🙏
🔍 Event Highlights:
Circular Economy statement:
Keeping track of the percentage of the existing building that will be retained and reused is important during all the design stages.
How we measure circular economy needs to be project specific, but there was a clear agreement to add carbon metrics.
The current planning systems can be improved to better encourage circular economy practices. Embedding targets and requirements to discharge at PC to make sure that the circular economy principles follow through all design stages
Targets should be communicated to all stakeholders, engaging clients and larger design teams into the process. Use of graphics and consistent metrics could make circular economy principles more clearly understandable.
Aspiration for a government supported database for building information. Even though the planning portal fulfils this duty for early stages, it would be good to have something similar for later design stages.
Pre-demolition audits:
The main driver to commission a pre-demolition audit are planning requirements, BREEAM certification and client or design team interest in investigating potential for reuse.
It is important to run a desk study and design team meeting before visiting the building to not only understand and investigate the existing building, but also for the team running the audit to understand what the design team is envisioning for the building.
There is a good use for pre-demolition audits at later design stages to develop the strip out scope, confirm reuse predictions.
It is important to add the pre-demolition audit as part of the tender package to make sure contractors use this information. Cost Plan and H&S considerations need to be linked to these documents.
The PDA is used as the basis / brief for demolition. It is the catalogue of those materials (rather than the quantities) that are used in the subsequent stages of design development
📣 What’s Next?
Huge thanks to ACAN Circular Economy coordinators Johanna Moro, Laura Mohirta, and Michelle Sanchez for organising this event. They’d like to invite everyone in the community to join them for the next workshops in this series. Stay tuned to our social media channels for updates and more opportunities to engage in these critical conversations!
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