New design guide and tool will help Civil Engineers address the issue of waste at the drawing board

The aim of the guide is to provide practical techniques and technical solutions to enable designers to reduce waste and maximise resource efficiency at the design stage of any project involving civil engineering. By so doing they can access significant environmental, carbon and cost savings.

The comprehensive guide has been produced following in-depth consultation with industry and is endorsed by the Institution of Civil Engineers.

ICE President, Professor Paul Jowitt, said:

“There are huge economic and environmental benefits in increasing resource efficiency and reducing the amount of materials used in civil engineering projects, therefore designing out waste is a must-have skill for the 21st century engineer. We are committed to helping our 80,000 members meet this challenge, and joining forces with WRAP on past initiatives has really helped industry recover and reuse wasted materials.  WRAP’s excellent new design guide takes this thinking a step further up the waste hierarchy, by helping civil engineers design waste out of their projects right from the outset.” 

Designing out Waste: a design team guide for civil engineering presents a structured approach, setting out key principles that can be used to design out waste. It illustrates how these can be applied on all new construction, maintenance, and refurbishment projects; focusing on existing best-practice and sharing knowledge in simple, easy to follow guidance.

The guide is presented in two parts:

Part 1 - Design Guide introduces the key principles of Designing out Waste. It shows how these can be integrated throughout the different design stages from feasibility to detailed design, and through into specification and procurement. It includes a guide to running design review workshops to help design teams identify and prioritise opportunities to design out waste in their own projects. The five key principles are:

• 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 on an extensive range of design solutions and engineering techniques which can be used to improve materials resource efficiency.

The launch of the design guide coincides with the development of a companion tool specifically for civil engineers.

The Designing out Waste Tool for Civil Engineering is a freely accessible resource available at www.wrap.org.uk/dowtce. It has been developed to help civil engineers in the following areas:

• 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 Tool is simple to use requiring only outline project data in order to process quick results, signposting financial savings and environmental benefits. 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 forecasts the following: 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.

The launch of the new guide and tool adds to the existing library of construction tools and guidance documents available on the WRAP website.

Editor's notes

• To download Designing out Waste: a design team guide for civil engineering visit www.wrap.org.uk/designingoutwaste.
• All types of civil engineering and infrastructure projects are set to 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. 
• The term ‘designer’ primarily refers to civil, structural, geotechnical and environmental engineers, but the concepts presented equally apply to other professionals involved in the design process such as contractors, landscape architects, technical consultants, quantity surveyors, cost consultants and architects.
• To access the Designing out Waste Tool for Civil Engineering visit www.wrap.org.uk/dowtce.
• WRAP launched Construction Commitments: Halving Waste to Landfill in October 2008. This voluntary agreement has been developed to help the construction industry deliver on the joint Government-industry Strategy for Sustainable Construction target to reduce construction, demolition and excavation (CDEW) waste sent to landfill by half by 2012 - against a 2008 benchmark. To date nearly 400 clients, contractors, designers, waste management contractors, manufacturers, suppliers, Government departments, local authorities and sector bodies have signed the commitment to reduce their construction waste.
• WRAP helps individuals, businesses and local authorities to reduce waste and recycle more, making better use of resources and helping to tackle climate change.
• Established as a not-for-profit company in 2000, WRAP is backed by government funding from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
• Working in seven key areas (Construction, Retail, Manufacturing, Organics, Business Growth, Behavioural Change, and Local Authority Support), WRAP’s work focuses on market development and support to drive forward recycling and materials resource efficiency within these sectors, as well as wider communications and awareness activities including the multi-media national Recycle Now campaign for England.
• More information on all of WRAP's programmes can be found on www.wrap.org.uk

Ian Palmer
Press Officer
Tel: 01295 819 677
Ian.Palmer@wrap.org.uk