Using Technology and Software to Create More-Sustainable Designs

MAY WINFIELD: Welcome. Today, I'm here to talk to you about using technology and software to create more sustainable designs. My name's May Winfield, and I'm the Global Director of Commercial, Legal, and Digital Risks at Buro Happold. I'm a senior construction lawyer of over 17 years experience and a specialist in construction technology.

I've spoken at events worldwide on this topic, and I've authored and co-authored various documentation in this area. I'm a member of various industry groups, including a new group called Zero, which we created to really progress sustainability in design and construction. Burp Happold takes technology and sustainability very seriously, and it's some of the central tenets of our business.

Some examples of our sustainable projects, one of them is the Expo 2020 in Dubai, and where the sustainability pavilion was all about promoting sustainable technology and design. There's then the Tencent Dachan Bay, where wind and solar performance in the master plan design was successfully optimized by adopting grasshopper computational techniques and computational fluid dynamics technology. And there was then sustainable design suggestions, such as building high-profile wind-friendly measures and building massing, which were integrated with the architectural design in a real example of collaboration at its best.

Another example is the Santa Monica City Hall, which meets the Living Building Challenge, which I understand is the most stringent green building rating system in the world. Buro Happold issued a global sustainability report in 2020, which set out our sustainability targets, the progress we've made in this area, and really intended to hold ourselves accountable to clients, and stakeholders, and to ourselves on how we should progress in this area.

So why does the sustainability and sustainability design matter? Well, if you look at any literature, any news in this area, it's clear we're in a climate crisis. It's no longer a nice to have, but it really matters to everybody.

And sustainability when it comes to construction sometimes don't sit very well together. McKinsey says that new building construction "is responsible for more than 2.5 gigatons of CO2 globally." And construction contributes to the climate emergency in rather large way. Building and construction is set to account for 40% of energy-related CO2 emissions, while cement accounting for 8% of global emissions, and construction industry accounts for 11% of all greenhouse gases globally.

That's a huge number of figures. But it's not just moral aspects that make this important. It also makes business sense.

McKinsey mentioned that when they asked 100 senior executives what trends expected to accelerate due to COVID, 53% cited sustainability. We need to be able to meet the demands and needs of our clients, while still achieving good time, good money, not extending liability. On Autodesk's website, I noticed they said sustainability is rapidly becoming one of the most frequent topics that clients ask them about.

And I'd like to now talk about some of the technology and processes that can result in more sustainable design. It's really encouraging to see that the construction industry is continually innovating to become more sustainable and reach the aspirational net zero carbon goals. One such way is introducing sustainability and digitization themes really early on in the design and construction process.

Early and effective processes and collaboration can come in many forms, and Autodesk easy collection and construction cloud give some good examples of this. And I'm going to, next, move on to some examples of what the technology and processes can involve.

Some of the key technologies in this area currently in use are listed there. And this includes BIM, the DfMA, smart buildings, digital twins, AI, automation, and so on. What these have in common is that they're all really data-rich. So they enable you to understand better how your asset functions or will function, and therefore, enable you to maximize efficiencies, reduce your carbon footprint, carry out simulations so you can see how you can improve the design in this area.

Thinking about BIM specifically, BIM enables us to create and manage projects faster and more economically, but also more sustainably, optimizing various sustainability parameters. The utilization of BIM allows us to track both the project performance and environmental impacts. And technology like BIM, like digital twins, enables clients to measure sustainability and improve upon it, and in a way that they can understand, even if they are, say, not very technologically-minded.

When it comes to DfMA, I was reading in The Economist last week, that prefab houses in California had been estimated to slash 2 tons of the amount of CO2 emitted per home, due simply to the reduction in lorry journeys. And that doesn't even take into account all the rest of the environmental benefits. Looking at a couple of other of these, when it comes to smart, smart usually indicates a technology which optimizes space, people, and operations. But this can, therefore, be used to minimize operational costs and carbon.

Then, there's automation and AI, or really machine learning at this stage. And these again, can help you to create better design, select better materials, and better manage the data so you are achieving more sustainable design or you can work out how you can do so. A lot of these go towards the circular economy, which is a very key part of sustainable design.

Now, you might have heard the phrase circular economy before. And it's really where you reduce the use of scarce resources and an increased focus on design for reuse instead of single use. And digitization and technology is really key area in achieving this.

Circular economy is something being looked at by various governments and various organizations worldwide. For example, the Dutch government aims to be 100% circular by 2050 and has an interim target, or 2030 target to be 50% circular, which is amazing. Buro Happold itself, you will recall I mentioned there was a global sustainability report where we issued targets, which I'll talk about more in a bit.

But how do we measure those? How do we make sure we're doing what we promised we would? Well, there's various ways. One of them is that we have a building performance dashboard.

Now, this collects data centrally for all projects over a certain size. And we have central reporting of various types of data regarding these projects. The real benefit of that is to enable the data being collected in a uniform way. You analyze it all in the same way, so you can work out where we are. It enables the results to be communicated across the business so we can understand what's going right and perhaps what can be improved.

Looking next at some of the technologies in this area that Buro Happold has created, there's the digital twins toolkit, which is a smart energy digital twins toolkit. So to achieve immersive and dynamic interactions, the resultant data and insights are streamed to both standard 3D web mapping platform as well as in Unreal gaming engine, for multi-user secure confidential simulation and interrogation.

Because of the different types of stakeholders, you really need it to be presented in a way that different types of people can understand and feel engaged. It incorporates various real-world data to support the intelligent selection of technology. You understand what the choices are being made by users. You can track the technologies they are choosing.

So then it enables you to make intelligent choices of what you do next. The key to unlocking the decarbonization challenge and developing innovative solutions to achieve net zero carbon is often said to lie in the analysis and understanding of vast quantities of data derived from various sources.

So the value in technologies like the Digital Twins Toolkit is often in the speed of understanding and assessment of different scenarios using real-time outcomes. You have transparency and stakeholder collaboration and engagement, and you also thereby reduce errors and risk of using incorrect data. And most of all, you have a data-driven, evidence-based, and risk-informed decision making.

Showing you what this looks like in practice, you'll see that the way the information is presented is understandable by different types of people. You don't necessarily need to be really technologically minded or sustainability engineer. And this helps in terms of collaboration, in terms of sensible discussions.

Some other aspects and some other technologies-- one of them is the Climate Toolkit, and this is said to shorten the time taken to generate a climate or comfort report from one day to only 10 minutes. Thereby, it removed barriers and speeds up the processes to run these complex analysis and generate the output. Understand this was created as a result of projects in the Middle East, when the teams were trying to work out how to do things better, how to create more sustainable results in a more efficient way.

The report is generated with a single click. And I've seen this happen with my own eyes. And you get things like wind speed, and humidity, and heat map, and so on. The usefulness, in a lot of ways, again, is in its accessibility. Though I would say this is not particularly useful without the engineers interpreting the outputs correctly and making sensible design decisions based on the information and data available. We're not going to be more sustainable just if we use a [INAUDIBLE] tool to provide us with data.

Automation like this is a great tool when applied sensibly, but it leads to more time being available for designers to make better decisions and produce high-quality sustainable designs. But it can't replace the years of experience, local knowledge that are precedent in the areas we work in. There's no one single tool that counts for all those variables, but there are lots of really vital important tools that will enable us to do our jobs better.

So again, just giving you some visuals of what this looks like in practice-- and again, you will see it's set out in an easy-to-understand way so that different people can use it and have an informed discussion-- use it for when they want to create a design. Turning next to the BHoM LCA Toolkit-- now, you may ask, what's BHoM? Well, the BHoM's a collaborative open source model enabling greater collaboration within the industry. And Buro Happold created it with this intention, and it's the foundation of a lot of our technologies in this area.

The modeling methodology is used to quantify carbon emissions and other environmental impacts of a process throughout various lifecycle stages. It allows parties to assess carbon on early models. And that's where the models are in Rhino, Revit, or even a table in Excel with predicted values. This enables parties to consider early design decisions and how they can best minimize environmental impact. In some ways, data provides us so much power and so much more ability to do the right thing.

The toolkit is built upon the foundational principles provided by the Carbon Leadership Forum Best Practice Guide. And you can look more about that on that link there. And the structured way it's organized ensures that no element is ignored. You don't miss out different things, because if you do, that will inevitably have a huge impact on the sustainability of your design or your intentions later on. Again, just visuals on what it looks like-- and again, the whole intention is to be able to have a huge amount of data presented in a way that parties can understand and can use in a quick and easy way.

Turning next to contracts and documentation, now you may ask, why am I talking about contracts when I'm talking about sustainable design? Well, the point is, that at the beginning of a project, it's like a grand love affair. Everyone's holding hands. If anything goes wrong, obviously you're just going to sit around a table and sort it out.

However, when there is a disagreement, when there is an issue, sometimes it can look more like this, and you find that everyone goes back to, what did we actually agree? What's on the documentation? What you recall and what the other party recalls on what you agreed may be very different. And you are bound by what it says in your contracts, and for that reason, it's very important your contracts are clear.

So things like saying, make the assets sustainable-- what does that actually mean? What you think it means and what your client thinks it means-- probably totally different. When you say sustainability, does it mean how it's being used? What sort of measurements are you going by? And it would be very useful to lay that out at the beginning.

Equally, a client may request certain softwares being used to create sustainability and sustainable aspects of the design. However, it's worth asking the question, what does the client expect to be achieved by using the software? And to make sure that the expectations are managed and everyone's on the same page-- is everyone using the same software, or are there going to be interoperability problems in-- if people are using different versions of software or different software completely?

There's then types of how the actual data is being presented. So a client may say, I want a digital twin, or give me the BIM model so I can maintain my asset in the sustainable way. Now, when they say that, do they actually know what a digital twin is, or BIM model? Do they have the right processes? Do they have all the right capability to use them in the most appropriate way?

A digital twin has so much ability to ensure a asset in a building is used in as sustainable way as possible and continue to improve. However, if you don't know how to use it or you don't have the right systems, it's not going to do that. And again, having that discussion, if you see very vague statements like this in your specifications, in your contracts, it may be worth sitting down and-- let's flesh that out. What you actually want-- so you don't get to the end of the stage and say, well, I thought I was getting something different. And you say, well, that would have cost you a lot more money, and then you have an expensive, time-consuming dispute.

In the same way, you may have a list of KPIs. Particularly in this growing area, people may list various things they want to achieve from a sustainability perspective. Particularly you'll find that there are more regulations and requirements in this area. But are those achievable? Are they things that are even reasonable? Do they take into account the changes in time and the changes in how people are working?

You may have one, for example, that says, we want you to achieve net zero carbon. Now, there's no magic in the phrase net zero carbon. In itself, it doesn't mean anything, from a legal and contractual perspective. Again, if you put 100 people in the room and you ask them, what do you think net zero carbon means in terms of a building, every single one would have a slightly different answer to that. And that has a huge impact, when you talk about a legal liability and proving you've done what you promised you would.

And when you come to things like net zero carbon KPIs, does it take into account how the building is used, or are you just saying, from a theoretical perspective, this is a very sustainable design-- until you start using it? Does it include things like paying for carbon offsetting? These are all very important issues.

On the flip side, parties providing the service can be very optimistic, can be very excited about this new area, and can be-- can use very-- language like expert or best in class, very optimistic language. And whilst there's nothing wrong with that in theory, there is an issue from-- there's a potential issue from a insurance perspective.

You may find certain phrases like, fit for purpose, best in class, being expert may not be insured under your professional indemnity policy. And it's really worth talking to some experts and professionals to make sure the phrasing you're using in your standard scopes for your sustainable design aren't falling foul, because you don't want to find out at the end, when you do have a complaint, a claim, that it's not insured.

And one more is about making sure the reason you need a clear scope is to make sure where the allocation of responsibility is. If there are gaps between responsibility-- it's not clear who's responsible for that particular aspect or achieving that part of it-- then when-- again, when something goes wrong, it's possible that fingers will be pointed in many different directions.

I heard of one example where a contractor refused to do sustainability aspects of a design, as they said it wasn't clear from the ender. And it was also too much of a cost to the client, and the sustainability aspects just fell away. In some ways, clarity is the most important thing-- so clarity of specification and scope-- who's doing what, when, and how?

So that's what-- who's responsible for the various things, as well as, how is this all going to be achieved? What software are you using? What hardware do people want to use? Is there particular processes that should be standardized? And making things really reasonable and avoiding very vague requirements and very vague sentences-- go and do some stuff. Go do sustainability.

Ultimately, it comes down to, does the client know what they want? Are they asking for certain sustainability elements, or are they asking for net zero carbon because they read about it and they thought it sounded like a good idea? Or did they employ a consultant who has prepared a set of specifications which don't actually reflect what they want, because they weren't able to correctly and clearly express it to that consultant?

Ask questions early, rather than finding out you misunderstood later. Equally, there needs to be clarity in the results and clarity and who's liable for them. So when you're thinking about sustainable design specifically, is it clear what it's based on-- particularly with the changing understanding all the time of what sustainability is-- what sort of materials you can use?

Do your documentation say, for example, it's based on the information you have now, in 10 years from now, if actually people say the materials you suggested are not sustainable? Are you going to be liable for that? Avoiding things like unlimited scope, it being clear what four corners of what your obligations are, and thinking about changing standards and developing regulations in this area.

Are you obliged to comply with them? Some contracts will say, for example, if there are any changes in law, developments in regulations, you will continue to comply with them. And that's fine for most normal areas of construction, but in this rapidly changing area, who should bear the potential additional cost and time that will result in? Something worth bearing in mind-- to build a summary of the three key points in this area, I guess, is, one, making sure there's clear scope.

What are you doing, and what are you providing? Making sure there's no gaps as-- between you and the rest of the project team-- your responsibilities and the client's. And making sure there's fair and reasonable exclusions and limitations-- in essence, making it clear what you are responsible for and what you're not responsible for.

Turning next to internal processes and documentation, these are really important if you intend to achieve sustainable design. You can have the best technology in the world, but without the right processes and documentation, you are not going to achieve all you set out to do. First thing is about just working together, talking, having the collaboration internally. The next one is about organized systems. Now, a lack of resources, skills, and technology can really impair a organization's progress towards a sustainable future.

For widespread adoption, sustainability solutions need to be easy and cost-effective. For example, Autodesk says they support this-- achieving this by solutions that streamline and democratize the practice of sustainable design. And you may find you use some technologies to create an organized system and collaboration. You also use some more old-school methods of meetings, and paperwork, and records.

It's often a real combination. And I've set out there some things which may help in this area, and one being, again, clarity, but this time of documentation and processes. Do you have internal standard templates, and scope, and processes? Everyone has the same message. Everyone knows what they should be delivering to the client.

And in that regard, people within the organization understanding what sustainable services are on offer, what processes are being used internally to be more sustainable, to provide more sustainable services-- you may find otherwise the people who are specializing in this area in your organization know everything about it, but some people in the other teams don't know much at all, and that's not going to work.

You may find it helpful to have various guidance checklists, training, so again, the understanding is uniform. Generally, you'll need a bit of push and pull. You need pull from senior management to ensure that sustainable design, a sustainable ethos and processes are followed, and a real push from those carrying out and developing the surfaces to be encouraged to do this.

It's not going to be enough for senior management to say, we're going to do design in a more sustainable way. Those actually doing those designs must want to do that as well. Some ways of helping that is having very clear and expressed and published ethos, and plans, and actions. And I'll talk about-- more about that in a bit.

But stepping one step back, how do you work out what you need? How do you work out what you need so you can then work out what processes, technology, and so forth? First, start with the what. What do you actually want to achieve? When you say, OK, we want to create more sustainable design, what does that actually mean for you? What does that mean for your organization? And therefore, what processes and tasks do you need to do to achieve that?

And then the who-- who is best placed to achieve those various processes and tasks? Is it a matter of selecting particular type of software who's best placed to investigate that, who bears the various roles and responsibilities that will be created in moving forward in this area? Thinking about how, there's going to be issues. There's going to be new risk. There's going to be new processes.

So how are those going to be dealt with? Could be something as simple as keeping records, having-- upskilling certain people so they can take a lead. And when it comes to new risks, thinking about, how big and small are they-- how likely are they going to happen? So in creating more sustainable design, introducing a lot of new technology in this area, you may have a really huge risk, but highly unlikely to happen.

You may take fewer mitigation measures against it then very small risk, but really likely to happen, and therefore, cause you financial loss. And it's just coming to those sensible decisions in this regard. And then, when does this matter? Well, unfortunately, the answer is all the time. If you want to have more sustainable design, if you want to progress in this area, you need to consider this right at the outset.

And I talked earlier about some of the technologies that Buro Happold has created, which intended to do that. And it's relevant throughout the project after the project's complete, because sustainability is a continuing and ever-changing thing impacted by various people's decisions. And in that regard, you have to design with the users in mind.

It's [INAUDIBLE] of a number of buildings which were built to be highly sustainable, but then when people started using them, and unfortunately, didn't use them quite as it was intended, suddenly these buildings were not as sustainable as people thought they would be. And all of that needs to be thought of. And in that regard, we probably need to be more agile and maybe more practical than in other areas of more established construction.

And clarity of responsibility and outcomes-- so OK, we're looking at the beginning. We want sustainable design for this sort of building with these sorts of users. Is everyone clear how we're going to achieve that, and is everyone clear who's responsible for it? And lastly, ethos-- now, again, why am I talking about ethos? You now have the perfect technology. You have the right processes in place. You have all your contracts in place to have a real sustainable design.

You are going to move forward in a very positive way. However, if you don't have the buy-in of the people within your organization, or indeed, the organization itself, it's not going to go anywhere. And ethos, I think, can fall into three categories, one big vision. Now, vision is good in a business generally, and having a clear vision is a critical tool to achieve desired results. And appropriate vision can be really unifying and inspiring, and a focal point for setting goals and plans and guiding decisions being made.

And don't underestimate the importance of a good vision as being a helpful public communication tool. For me, purpose is more granular direction to division. And with purpose and targets, you have understandable messaging, maybe with stretch targets to ensure you achieve the purpose and vision, providing clear structure for the organization and the staff to move forward consistently.

You can also use the opportunity of publishing the purpose and targets to acknowledge the work being done by various people and individuals in this area within the organization. And Buro Happold did this in its global sustainability report. And lastly, you have the organization-wide steps. These, to me, are coherent steps that make it more likely that the targets, and the purpose, and vision are going to be achieved, and not forgotten.

A positive side effect I have seen can be that individuals and teams make independent efforts to develop these steps further. Because it gives them a clear structure and a clear basis, they then are able to develop this in a way that they know will be supported. And at the beginning, I mentioned that Buro Happold had some of its own targets, which published in the Buro Happold global sustainability report last year.

And these are those. One is being to reduce our own operational carbon emissions, and an aim for our own business operations to be net zero carbon. The next is to design all new build projects to be net zero carbon, and finally to reduce embodied carbon intensity for all new buildings, major retrofits, and infrastructure projects. These are real stretch goals, and they are very ambitious, but if we aren't going to be ambitious and we aren't going to really show our commitment, I think it's very easy for these things to be forgotten in the rush of the normal day-to-day work that we're all facing.

I'd like to next turn to some real practical lessons learned that have been told to me from those really in the thick of it of sustainable design. One of the things that kept being told to me is about the importance of encouraging and ensuring adoption. So there's a real dichotomy between the traditional mindset and a growth mindset in our industry. And it's not just in sustainable design, but you see this in digitization and technology generally.

But then you have those bridging the gap, that is bringing sustainability more actively into the area of design and construction to make it more business as usual. We need to be technologically open. I think everyone's met that person who says, I've been doing this the same way for 25 years and it's all been fine. And the truth is it hasn't, as we saw with the percentages of the CO2 emissions. We clearly need to do something slightly differently.

Technology is a great enabler, and it's also a very, very good communication tool. I would say probably most people have a smartphone. However, some people remain a bit hesitant about using technology and digital processes at work, and showing how technology can make their lives better, how it can help them create more sustainable design and analyze data faster-- can be a real way to get them on side.

However, technology is not a panacea. Some tasks are still going to be time-consuming. Most things need human input, and human input is fallible. We may end up with incorrect or inaccurate results because of the input. There's no one technology or software solution that's going to solve all our problems. We still need and really rely on the expertise of the individuals in our organization. However, technology, as I hope I've shown, can actually save time, and save efforts, and enable us to come to better solutions.

And also, it's important for people to understand their own skill set and limitation-- those of others. What do I mean by that? Well, a sustainability engineer may not have all the knowledge or information to be able to interpret the data that has been produced regarding sustainability. They need to work with some of the other engineers so that, together, they create the-- a design that is as sustainable as possible.

And in that regard, collaboration really is key. And technology enables better communication on projects and what is possible to be achieved. And communication is a really, really key point to all of this. When you talk together and you explain what you're doing and how you're doing it, inevitably you will be able, by discussion, to find improved ways. You will be able to spread the information that you have gathered so that everyone else can improve the way they're working as well.

Bit of a final summary-- I'd say there's a growing realization of design's importance to facilitate carbon reduction and a circular economy of resources. We need a multi-pronged approach without one single panacea, whether it's one software or otherwise. We need to really gather the data, set realistic targets-- based hopefully on facts and science-- and measure and disclose progress, be accountable both internally and externally, and review progress regularly-- because this is an area that is changing all the time. We're learning things all the time.

We need to inform policy, both, again, internally and within the wider industry. We need to push for industry standards and invest in technical and strategic innovation in this area. And it's, again, important not to forget your contracts and documents, because all that hard work will be undone if you don't get that right.

And when you think about it, I think these four points are all arguably the main ones [INAUDIBLE] the targets, the aims, intentions. Who's responsible for what? But as important as listing what you're responsible for, it's important to list what you're not responsible for. In all my years of working in this industry, I've often found the time that causes the most issues and most disputes are the gaps.

If it's very clear what's in your contract and what you're responsible for, you may not like it at the time it comes up, but you won't have an argument about it. And I think my final thought would like to be that the scale of what we need to achieve-- it requires real partnerships. And there's an enormous and largely unexploited opportunity to bring the construction and technology industries together in a globally significant way in this area.

We have the connections, and the resources, and the skills, and the knowledge, and the economic muscle to really make a difference, to support those construction and technology partnerships ready to move the needle to a more sustainable future. And this is something none of us can ignore and none of us can afford to be left behind about.

The last thing I would like to leave you on is a quote from an Autodesk University 2020 article which said that the demand for sustainable buildings is increasing, doubling every three years. And that's a huge amount, and no doubt is set to increase further. And I hope I've given you some ideas and some food for thought on how to progress that. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed that, and I look forward to speaking to you soon.