1.0 Introduction
Historically, civil engineering is one of the oldest practices in engineering, and still remains the broadest professional field combined with scientific principles. Many early structures, facilities, and transportation aspects were the result of the greatest engineering minds, then branching out into materials science, soil mechanics, waterworks, environment, mechanics and other subgenre fields. However, a particular discipline thriving in one geographical area may not necessarily thrive in another. This explains why sustainable design in the United Kingdom prefers to keep its design sustainability a step ahead for all aspects of civil engineering design (Sherwin, 2012). Since civil engineering umbrellas a multitude of engineering fields, it is important to recognize how sustainability is integrated into the design process of all designs.
Unbeknownst to many engineers, including the ones with the most practical experience, many elements are overlooked before the planning stage of development and design because of the difficulty in accounting for every environmental and social factor Schon, 2001). These factors usually illustrate implications after the fact that a project has been approved and then completed. In such cases, civil engineers need to be heavily involved in project forecasts and consult with the subject neighborhood that would be impacted by these projects.
2.0 The Design Strategy
Sustainable development involves more than solely formulating the proper design team and sourcing the proper materials. Each factor needs to equally contribute at the management and material level. The UK government has taken up active measures to reverse the environmental effects that may be a long shot, but be an initiative in long term planning developing environmental and ethical protocols, and sustainable development guidelines to meet the needs of climactic changes. Where in the earlier pioneer days, civil engineering has prospered in the technological aspects, it now needs to set aside its physical components and focus on the macroscopic level. The key factors to be addressed are the minimization of waste material and energy use to only impact the environment. Unless another strategic plan to reuse material can be integrated into other projects, they can be considered into current projects in question where little land use is to be yielded to store waste products (Anastas, P.L. & Zimmerman, J.B., 2003).
Before the planning of any project can begin, all engineering firms involved shall provide a public referendum for both the design team and the public that may be affected by the project. The referendum would at least forward some feedback as to each individual interested in the project, because the locations of the extent of the project would call for diverse impacts per capita. In other words, a communal report following a notification distribution could search for information on any thoughts of the project. This procedure may reach out to other professionals currently dwelling within the community who may even be interested in the project. Since they are familiar with the area, these local professionals could be an ideal choice to be part of the design tea, depending on the length of time they lived there. For example, if a community is faced with the construction of a roadway or a bridge, a general consensus throughout the neighborhood to be impacted may have the first opinions whether in favor or in contrast. The more outreach that occurs, the more opinions can be gathered and examined by the professional design team. As a project instigation, the important agenda item to illustrate is the presentation of the project for public viewing to identify the promises and pitfalls.
The concept of sustainable design in civil engineering provides an alternative to traditional practices to meets the needs of future generations.
3.0 Concerns Regarding Sustainability
Besides overseeing many other fields in urban design and planning, road designs and transportation, it has become a growing trend to minimize environmental impacts on natural environments. Civil engineering sustainability is often related to the finished products that may have long-term coexistence with people and the natural environment other than the initial stages of project design (Egen, 1998). Civil engineers in the UK for some time have described a set of guiding principles concerning the following topical concerns that are under consideration for practical purposes: socio-centric, techno-centric, and eco-centric.
Each of these concerns have been thoroughly researched and addressed by the Institutional of Civil Engineers (ICE) which adapts standards of practice from the Royal Academy of Engineering where the first two (socio-centric and techno-centric) are incorporated into the third concern (eco-centric). It has been described as a peripheral method in which, besides adjusting to the world environment, how the world may adjust to the carefully planned human influence.
Technology may be helpful in quickening project performance, but not suitable if not favorable to the environment. This is why civil engineers are assigned the duty as the key players to select the most sustainable and economical resources to assist in community infrastructure. In spite of the awareness of sustainable design growing, not only in the developed world, but also in lesser developed countries, civil engineers would still be summoned to act as the solutions to social and environmental problems, even if it means to monitor and handle systems from both ends of the spectrum. As aforementioned, the importance of a civil engineer’s awareness of the community may be initialized by only a single client. Whatever the wants and needs of the client may not be a favorable to the remainder of the community. Hence, sustainability has to stem from interdisciplinary solutions for the good of the community and a holistic approach is required to supersede the individual approach as in the case of a general consensus for the sake of fairness to the community.
Thus, promoting a sustainability alliance offers civil engineers in the UK the opportunity to face technical challenges not sought by the community, and with greater numbers can provide vocal concerns all across the board.
Once the general scope of work is examined and understood between the design team and community, the responsibility of civil engineers lies in the social and environmental principles to reduce adverse effects of the project, and retain long-term environmental performance. Evidently the proposal shall be proven sustainable as the wants and needs of the community may change over time. Urgently, products, services and infrastructure currently compatible with the environment may need to undergo upgrades or replacement. For example, a region specifically zoned for industrial use may permit the usage of certain products deemed suitable for the zone itself. But if the region is to experience rezoning into a residential neighborhood, the sustainability plan shall be altered to suit the new residences and ensure their health and safety. Additionally a detailed environmental report to completely phase out the once permitted usable products need to declare a new set of products on the market for this new development.
Forecasting the state of the environment can be tedious and vital for civil engineers, as introducing the latest designs in sustainability rests on their shoulders. Engineers seeking specific skills and abilities to coordinate with professional diversity demand a new perspective of a positively or negatively impacted community and to create models for better preparedness. This explains why a general consensus from the community and region in question shall be allowed the first input regardless of economic opportunities. Unfortunately, the data can only be gathered by a referendum from those who are willing to participate in the project, whether directly or indirectly involved. For the laypeople deemed uninterested in a project, may either support or hinder during the project stage if not initially willing to forward their input. Additionally, a project is not required to be that of a large scale. A project as small as a single family residential building may have potential of triggering future effects on the community environment. A home designed with diverse aesthetics set apart from the rest of a block could spurn concerns for neighboring residences preferring to maintain the current streetscape.
Sometimes even when civil engineers are confident in future implications of a project in spite of public consultation, issues emerge during a construction phase unexpectedly. So a well accepted tool civil engineers in the UK use for wise decision-making is the sustainability environmental assessment tool (also known as SEA). This tool helps reduce problems that may arise during the project to help cover costs and investments in case the project travels sideways. While public consultation may help, allowing space for flexibility in cases of environmental sensitivities, resource availability, and damage due to weather conditions that may hinder construction or trigger project boundaries situated beyond project budgets and areas (Townsend, 2005). As much as even the best engineering and scientific minds may micro-analyze every possible factor leading to approval of construction, approval does not guarantee any on site issues that may only be resolved during the construction stage. Tying in the SEA tool with prior public consultation with the neighboring community cannot fully prevent, as the neighborhood shall understand, all unforeseen circumstances and setbacks, but only reduce them. Plus by pre-arranging a project in stages may also assist preserving natural resources and allow it to proceed smoothly upon financial, environmental and operational factors. By prior effective planning and decision-making, a project becomes much more feasible as almost every factor is captured to account for material used and processed, and energy and water can be efficiently conserved.
Frequently civil engineers in the UK study a given community’s occupant load factor against the environment and ecosystem to measure people’s effects on the project’s surroundings. This is known as the ecological footprint calculation (EFC). As people use or consume the world’s natural resources and discharge wastes into the environment, the ecosystem regenerates the resources and absorbs the waste products. The EFC is updated every year to collect all the data needed to determine the rate at which the resources regenerate to replace the resources wasted. Common engineering practice measures the EFC globally, but of the purposes of a project, this calculation takes into account the existing number of people and the number of predicted people entered into the finished project. In the UK, the ecological footprint between Wales and East England is averaged to be 5.45 global hectares per capita as of a 2005 study. The EFC varies among different communities and also depends on the zone and the type of buildings within the zone. The varying factors also accounted for are compared between the occupants of a given area in question and the number of visitors, where they are further compared. Similar to the EFC to limit the usage and waste discharge, the carbon footprint is calculated as the total amount of greenhouse gases produced to directly and indirectly support human activities. The difference with the carbon footprint also includes emissions from non-renewable energy sources. As of 2012, the UK government has closely approached its goal to become carbon-neutral.
4.0 Project Level Issues of Progression
The issues to progressing sustainable development come down to the interconnection of the topical concerns mentioned earlier and finding a balance among each topic. Each topic is normally presented with a stand-alone argument, each momentarily moving away from the macroscopic scale and taking a closer look at the components. Although, initial planning for the project environment is a must, both the team leaders and field practitioners constantly face change. How the changes are faced and challenged determine the durability of the project environment also dictate the critical factors of sustainability. One good practice is looking for upcoming opportunities during work in progress instead of solely relying on the planning stage, although it serves as a guide to preserving the community environment and its natural resources.
With the news of a brand new development, most view this as disturbing the land that once served as nature’s habitat and replacing it with an imposing and sturdy structure. Even before a project begins, during the planning stage, the subject property and properties to be affected by change can be studied to extract and determine what material the environment currently provides (Ryan, 2006). The notion is to retain the natural resources already present rather than replacing them with incompatible and artificial products. An alternative, in case not enough resources can be yielded, is for environmental engineers to derive external products suitable for the project area to maintain the natural aesthetics, or material resources designed to return energy and water back to the ecosystem. Having a green building for example, would only lightly impact the surroundings while harmonizing both the natural and human interacting, especially if older, existing structures are already erected nearby and have not been designed to the green program. Whether planning to develop or redevelop due to land rezoning, not only the use of the building shall be considered, but how they are to be accessed. As a community grows, the environmental concerns also grow. Transportation and rerouting roadwork would definitely bring a community up in arms if they are forced to evacuate their territory or dedicate parcels of land.
Surely, during the work in progress, many obstructions come to head in large developments. If excessive wastes are being forecasted, measures to transport them and properly dispose of them shall be minimized. Hence, the initial planning stage is in place to reduce these effects, but shall be conducted post-construction, as well as duration of the project. With products potentially turning into waste, a practice of reusing them in other stages and aspects of the projects, or preserve them for future projects elsewhere would benefit project investors and maintain healthy levels of environmental effects. This is why it is important for civil engineers to seriously consider the existing on-site materials to be reused on current projects if deemed usable. Naturally, not every piece of wood or every handful of soil cannot be usable on the subject property, but could be usable elsewhere.
Since most construction required excavation and disturbance of soil, groundwater needs to be preserved and maintained. Only if the project needs to truly interrupt the natural water flow, shall waterworks be included in the project design. Groundwater that is essential to marine wildlife and integral to the ecosystem cannot be diverted to a secondary path, as it may not allow the subsoil to be stable (Dooge, 2000). Measures into collecting filtered rainwater may be initially costly, but would reduce harmful residual effects to the environment and costs in the long term. Again by using the readily and naturally occurring resources offered by the ecosystem, the harmony between human influence and nature would prevail. The need of creating artificial products would be reduced and may also serve as learning and training grounds for the soon-to-be inhabitants of the new project to rely on the natural environment essentially becoming helpers to civil engineers and the community.
5.0 Conclusion
Over the years the roles of civil engineers have changed and the number of civil engineers involved in sustainable design has increased geometrically. Unfortunately, past practices, although durable and inventive, have overlooked the environmental and ecological impacts of their relative designs. However, as progress usually travel, gladly the study beyond technology has evolved to gradually reduce environmental damage and restore the ecosystem with natural and compatible products and resources. The terminology for sustainable design has also adapted into the term sustainable development and is somewhat deemed to be an engineering category on its own as it encompasses the economic, social and environmental aspects of engineering design. Because civil engineering umbrellas several other engineering practices, sustainable development has become an integral part to the civil engineering faculty in the UK.
As the university and trade programs are changing along with the practical aspects of sustainable design, this makes the engineering students well prepared and proficient when undertaking field projects. All it would take is for a small change in academics beginning a ripple effect toward the sustainable development approach in the field. Positive and impressive results never do occur overnight, and only a few minor improvements to constitute larger ones would see how improvements on a macroscopic scale would be illustrated.
Work Cited
Sherwin, C. (2012). Embedding Sustainability In All Design. The Guardian Sustainable Business.
Dooge, J.C. (2010). Concepts of the Hydrological Cycle Ancient and Modern. Irish Meteorology Society.
Ryan, C. (2006). Dematerializing Consumption through Service Substitution is a Design Challenge. Journal of Industrial Ecology.
Anastas, P.L. & Zimmerman, J.B. (2003). Through the 12 Principles of Green Engineering. Environmental Science and Technology.
Bennett, J. & Crudgington, A. (2003). Sustainable Development: Recent Thinking and Practice In the UK. Engineering Sustainability 156 Issue ESI.
Schon, D. (2001). The Crisis of Professional Knowledge and the Pursuit of an Epistemology of Practice. Competence in the Learning Society.
Sustainable Buildings Task Group. (2004). Better Buildings – Better Lives. Sustainable Construction Report UK.
Townsend, T. (2005). Why Don’t We Build More Sustainable Housing? Urban Design.
Egan, J. (1998). Rethinking Construction. Department of Trade and Industry.
