Civil engineers now have a new tool to help them at the design stage to reduce waste and maximise resource efficiency in their projects.
WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) has provided Designing out Waste: a design team guide for civil engineering available to download free from www.wrap.org.uk/designingoutwaste.
There is also a companion tool www.wrap.org.uk/dowtce.
The guide is full of practical techniques and technical solutions.
WRAP says all types of civil engineering and infrastructure projects could benefit from the new guide: highways, tunnels, airports, railways, coastal and flood defences, ports and harbours, bridges and structures and development site infrastructure, among many other schemes.
Its intended users are civil, structural, geotechnical and environmental engineers, but the concepts presented equally apply to others involved such as contractors, landscape architects, technical consultants, quantity surveyors, cost consultants and architects.
It has been produced following in-depth consultation with industry and is endorsed by the Institution of Civil Engineers whose President, Professor Paul Jowitt, said: "WRAP's excellent new design guide takes resource efficiency thinking a step further up the waste hierarchy, by helping civil engineers design waste out of their projects right from the outset."
It sets out key principles and illustrates how these can be applied on all new construction, maintenance, and refurbishment projects.
The guide is presented in two parts:
Part 1 - Design Guide introduces the five key principles:
- Design for Reuse and Recovery;
- Design for Off Site Construction;
- Design for Materials Optimisation;
- Design for Waste Efficient Procurement; and
- Design for Deconstruction and Flexibility
Part 2 - Technical Solutions gives comprehensive technical information which can be used to improve materials resource efficiency.
The accompanying tool is called Designing out Waste Tool for Civil Engineering is a freely accessible resource available at www.wrap.org.uk/dowtce. It is good for:
- Identifying opportunities to design out waste in their own civil engineering projects;
- Recording design solutions taken to reduce material consumption and wastage;
- Calculating the impact of these solutions including savings in project costs, waste to landfill and embodied carbon;
- Comparing the performance of alternative design scenarios; and
- Providing a waste forecast for Site Waste Management Plans (SWMPs).
The first step is to select and quantify the main components of the project, from which the Tool provides an initial estimate of impacts.
The user can then select actions against the five key principles of designing out waste.
If, for example, a project requires embankments the Tool enables the designer to quantify the materials needed to construct these to their specified elevation, and identifies the amount of in situ material which can be reused.
The Tool identifies good practice and comes up with predictions based on what you put in, such as the amount of waste arising, waste to landfill, value of material wasted, the cost of waste disposal, embodied CO2 levels and recycled content.
Used in conjunction with the Designing out Waste guide, the Tool allows civil engineering practices to improve resource efficiency.
This offers a low effort method to include potential savings in the tender specification from an early design stage.
Outputs from the Tool can easily be incorporated into the WRAP Site Waste Management Plan Template www.wrap.org.uk/swmp.
