19 March 2015

Costain once again demonstrated its commitment to a sustainable future by celebrating this year’s Climate Week with a range of activities.

The aim, said Damien Canning, Costain Carbon Manager, was to raise awareness of climate related matters, with particular focus on whole life carbon issues. “We wanted to highlight the commercial benefits to our projects of pursuing low carbon, low cost solutions to deal with not only direct emissions but also embodied and operational carbon emissions through collaboration with our value chain.”

In preparation for the week, Costain launched the video ‘Introduction to Climate Week’  which outlined some of the challenges faced by the business and highlighted how low carbon and low cost solutions are being implemented on projects across the Group.

Costain’s SHE department also drafted a best practice document showing Costain’s progress towards its carbon targets, along with great examples of resource-efficient best practices that have been adopted across a broad range of projects. The document is also an introduction to Costain’s Infrastructure Carbon Review commitments, with examples of significant carbon savings achieved through intelligent design, procurement and collaboration on a number of projects.

These innovations have also often led to significant improvements in project profitability. “We have a pretty strong correlation between the cost of what we deliver, to the carbon content. Carbon is hardwired to the energy input into what we do, how we do it and the final product,” commented Darren James, Costain Managing Director, Infrastructure.

Two contests also took place during the week. A ‘guess the footprint’ competition raised £240 for the Costain 150 Challenge* and was won by Steve Voller at London Power Tunnels. George Holder at the Crossrail C610 contract won the daily quiz.

Project SHE teams ran workshops on resource efficiency and Costain’s Infrastructure Carbon Review commitments to raise awareness of potential carbon and cost saving opportunities on their projects. Each project submitted innovative solutions suggested by project teams as part of these workshops. The winners will be announced shortly.

“The week was a great success,” said Damien. “We received a great deal of positive feedback from inspired employees and look to build on this strong foundation going forward.”

 

*The 150 Challenge commemorates Costain’s 150th anniversary and involves raising £1million in 2015 for the Costain Charitable Foundation’s four chosen charities – the British Heart Foundation, Macmillan Cancer Support, youth charity The Prince’s Trust and Samaritans.

 

Ends

 

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