Sharing progress on our sustainability strategy

UKREiiF is taking place in Leeds this week, and both Sir Robert McAlpine and Sir Robert McAlpine Capital Ventures are sponsors of the UKBCSD’s Beyond Net Zero Pavilion.

We firmly believe that sustainability is essential to our long-term success, and our focus on Environmental Social Governance (ESG) positions us as a key contributor to a more sustainable construction sector.

On this occasion, Sustainability Director, Simon Richards, shares insights into our progress against the four pillars of our sustainability strategy: Carbon, Resource Efficiency, Ethical Procurement, and Social Value.

Carbon

We’re committed to decarbonisation, with a focus on reducing our emissions to deliver a Net Zero Carbon (NZC) business.

Our focus:

1. Measuring and reducing our carbon footprint in line with our ambition
2. Evolving our design, procurement, and construction practices to deliver lower carbon solutions for our clients and reduce the built environment’s carbon emissions
   
   

In FY22/23 as a business we achieved the following:

• 22% reduction in absolute carbon emissions (scope 1,2&3)
• 48% reduction in absolute scope 1&2 emissions
• 22% reduction in absolute scope 3 emissions

Resource Efficiency

• 5% reduction in absolute construction waste
• 5% Diversion from landfill (construction waste)
  
  

Ethical Procurement

Our targets around ethical procurement centre around:

1. Ensuring the materials we purchase are responsibility sourced to a recognised third party standard.
2. Conducting Site Engagement Surveys and Labour Practice audits on our sites and within our supply chain.
   
   

95% Key Building Materials Responsibly Sourced

We aim to source materials which are manufactured under the control of a third-party certified process, to standards like BES6001 and IS014001.

This reporting year we improved our performance against this metric from our FY20/21 position (92%).

• 12 Site Engagement Surveys
• 29 Ethical Labour Practice Audits
  
  

With a significant proportion of our spend with our supply chain partners, we use these audits to identify and address any risks that may result from our procurement decisions.

Social Value

As Social Value encompasses a wide range of deliverables, instead of setting individual metrics for each deliverable we have set a Social Return on Investment (SROI) target for our business, which aggregates the value created by all our activities into a single number using LOOP.

Our target is to deliver an annual increase in SROI.

We also monitor the individual metrics which make up the overall SROI, so we can report and track trends.

In FY22/23 we delivered an SROI of:

£39.9m SROI - Almost double the SROI performance of last year, which was £20million.