JBA’s commitment to sustainability is at the heart of everything we do. From how we deliver projects for our clients to how we operate as a business. Read on to learn about the challenges we faced and successes we had in creating a low carbon culture at JBA Bentley.
Our carbon Roadmap
JBA Bentley has worked on the Environment Agency Frameworks since 2013. And we have always been aware of the need for carbon reduction. It guided our work, but it didn’t really feel like it was at the heart of decision making.
In 2017 we decided at board level we had to place carbon reduction front and centre of what we were about as a business. It was the right thing to do and made good sense as a business to really challenge ourselves to put carbon reduction first. We created and refined yearly our Carbon Roadmap, our plan to achieve the goals.
Creating a low-carbon culture
At the outset, we had some very polarised opinions on the matter within our project delivery teams. We had some passionate advocates, and there were some who thought whilst we operated in construction, we were always going to be a generator of carbon. Developing a culture meant we needed everyone to get on board.
We initially did some carbon awareness raising training to put carbon into people’s consciousness and started to change the way we talked to teams about their work. Regularly discussing the options of build nothing, build less or build smart. We also invested in a carbon monitoring tool, the Mott MacDonald MOATA Carbon Portal, which gave us a better tool to quickly gauge the carbon impact of or project decisions.
Making carbon reduction everyone's responsibility
We have moved from a position where low carbon and sustainability was just something that the environmental team were interested in and would remain on the periphery of our project decision making. We now see how carbon saving is the responsibility of everyone in the project team, from designers to our procurement team and our site delivery teams. Making it everyone’s responsibility has made carbon reduction part of our language, our everyday discussions, our culture.
We still have a long way to go in many aspects of the wider sustainability question but having started with making carbon reduction mainstream we have a head start in delivering social and environmental change.
Email Tony Moran for more information.
JBA-Bentley is a joint venture between JN Bentley and Jeremy Benn Associates (JBA), established in 2013. The partnership brings together the specialist skills and expertise of the two firms: JN Bentley as a civil engineering contractor, and us (JBA) as a water and environmental consultant and designer
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