ZERO, reaching 2050 - you must be joking
Watch the episode on YouTube right here!
Carbon legislations and requirements on sustainability have made digitalization go from “nice to have” to “need to have” within the Construction Industry.
We created a podcast episode: “ZERO, reaching 2050 – you must be joking” with Co-Founder of ZERO Construct, Matthew Jackson. Join us as we’re talking about sustainability and zero carbon within the Industry.
Where do you go if you have questions about reducing carbon in construction?
These questions kick-started ZERO Construct. Matthew started the community with a couple of co-workers. The question on how to reduce carbon was apparently a difficult one to answer all over the world. And ZERO now has more than 3000 members globally.
They produce content and share information.
They share information about successes and especially about their experiences with failure.
Important failures, which provoke questions like:
- What didn’t work?
- Why didn’t it work?
- How can we learn from it in order to improve our Industry?
We have to ask these questions, in order to evolve and solve the problems in sustainability.
The goal of sustainability is difficult.
That’s why we want to talk about it.
In this article, we’ll discuss:
- What keeps us from our sustainability goals?
- To share is to care …
- Education and Greenwashing.
What keeps us from our sustainability goals?
Why is it so hard to execute on the plans of sustainability?
Difficulties occur when companies have high global corporate strategies, but the people on the ground have zero understanding of how to implement it. That’s becoming a bit of a challenge now when there are more and more constraints and requirements they need to follow within the organization and industry.
That’s why Matthew works with the ZERO Community. The vast majority of the people in ZERO are people that deliver projects.
They are out in the real world finding real solutions.
Real strategies, instead of the management consulting approach where you point out abstract targets. Targets you don’t even know how to get started with.
How is that useful for the work you have to deliver tomorrow?
With the management consulting approach, you’re handed a roadmap with a start and an ending point.
However, the middle is just…. Black.
There’s nothing there.
“Good luck… Lights are off so just go for a walk, and see where you end up.”
That is not a way to work.
Our Industry is extremely complex, broad, skilled and full of very smart people. We have to be able to navigate in this blackness.
But where do we start?
To share is to care…
Start sharing your experiences.
The lack of transparency within our Industry goes way back. That is an unfortunate side of the capitalistic competitiveness. But we need to change that if we want to achieve, what we need to in the next 20 years.
Along with digitalization, sustainability is now driving the need for full transparency in the Construction Industry.
We need to accelerate on digitalizing, and we often mention this need for a more digitalized Industry. The reason being:
In order to measure that volume of information and to be able to report on it, we need a more digitalized Industry. We can’t reach the goals of sustainability with a huge amount of manual work.
How could we possibly measure everything manually with so many new requirements?
If we evolve towards a more digitalized and transparent Industry:
- We’ll be able to meet the demand of urbanization.
- We can navigate in the darkness towards a more sustainable world.
- We will be able to build what, and how it’s required with less people (we are already in lack of people within the Industry).
In order to do more with less, we have to use technology.
But we need to do it right now!
Education and Greenwashing
One of the difficulties in the Industry is the fact that some students don’t have an up-to – date education.
When you look at their curriculum, some of todays universities are teaching the same curriculum to Quantity Surveyors coming out of university today as I was taught around 20 years ago. There is something fundamentally wrong with that: teaching the same as we got so many years ago!
Another problem is Greenwashing.
We don’t understand how anybody, at this point in our Industry, is able to claim they build a zero carbon building.
Why can’t we celebrate the small achievements on sustainability and the development instead of greenwashing it all? We need to accept that the journey towards a more sustainable industry is going to take time.
Instead of raising your hand, and claiming you already reached your goals, you should keep looking forward: what’s your next step toward a more sustainable construction?
Maybe you should consider changing your vehicles?
There are so many choices you need to make if you want to be utterly green
These are some of the steps, we think the Industry should consider:
- Find a way to attract new people to the Industry.
- All universities have to update their curriculum.
- We need better data (Companies shouldn’t be able to greenwash their constructions).
- We need one global definition of what zero carbon means in terms of measuring.
We are not experts in sustainability.
But we need to be willing to work towards more sustainable goals. Share your experiences and keep moving forward to the next big step.
Maybe then… the blackness will brighten.