How BRE certification promotes climate resilience in construction

Climate Resilience

Climate resilience can be understood as the ability of assets, networks and systems to anticipate, absorb, adapt or rapidly recover from a disruptive event related to the climate. As a major global contributor to GHG emissions, waste and climate change, climate resilience a highly important consideration for the built environment. Indeed, given the rise in extreme climate-related events, and the global need to reduce our climate impact and achieve net zero targets, it is critical that the construction industry strives for climate change mitigation, as well as preparing for the impacts of climate change.

 

CEEQUAL’s role

The CEEQUAL sustainability scheme is designed to contribute to climate resilience. With with a specific category dedicated to resilience, which considers the risks to an asset, its dependencies and consequently, the required asset resilience, CEEQUAL is a position to help.

To achieve climate resilience, CEEQUAL encourages project teams to proactively identify hazards, and undertake risk evaluation and management for the asset and the infrastructure system within which it sits. Specifically, CEEQUAL considers three assessment issues within the category of resilience:

• Risk assessment and mitigation: covers the assessment and mitigation of risks and negative impacts associated with natural hazards, intentional threats and climate change over the design life of the asset.
• Flooding and surface water run-off: minimises the negative effects of flood risk, including consideration of current flood risk, use of sustainable drainage systems, and managing surface water run-off.
• Future needs: encourages the appropriate adaptability for future needs in a manner that avoids unnecessary disruption, inconvenience and cost.

 

Hear from our clients

Hear what our clients had to say about climate resilience in the built environment by watching the video below.

Thank you to Andy Barnes of Schofield Lothian Limited, Alice Bailey of Crest Nicholson, Derk Welling of APG, Etienne Dupuy of Invesco, and Stephan De Bie of Vesteda for taking the time to share their thoughts.