Innovate UK’s latest report on establishing the business case for adapting buildings to climate change highlights some tough realities for government and owners.

Government was this week urged to use changes in building regulations and planning standards to focus client and design community thinking on the need to adapt new and existing buildings to meet the demands of a changing climate.

A new industry-backed report produced by Innovate UK highlights that the current approach to climate change adaptation was perhaps a decade behind mitigation policies and warns that “left to market forces as recommended in [government] current policy, adapting the UK’s built environment is likely to be reactive and possibly too late to avoid the downside risk”.

"Government should lead the industry to think about the common good. We need to establish some consensus so that every individual project doesn’t have to make up the rules.” Bill Gettings, architect and report co-author

“The existing barriers to creating a viable market for building design adaptation services constitute both market and policy failures, legitimate justifications for Government intervention,” it adds. 

The report "The business case for adapting buildings to climate change" recommends that government should “co-ordinate the updating of standards, planning and Building Regulations to accommodate climate change adaptation as soon as possible” adding that “the use of future weather data should be required by the Building Regulations at their next revision, and could mandate a key role for phased adaptation plans as a way to allow for phased adaptation.”

As a key property owner and built environment client government is in a critical position to drive the vital culture change needed to switch industry and design community thinking towards climate change adaption, said report co-author architect Bill Gettings during the launch this week at the Vision show in London.

“Government expects the market to do everything but that just encourages the short term view,” said Gettings. “Government should lead the industry to think about the common good. We need to establish some consensus so that every individual project doesn’t have to make up the rules.”

The report underlines this need for government to widen its thinking from the current “lower carbon-lower cost” design focus to mitigate climate change toward the more complex, possibly more capital cost intensive focus on adapting assets to meet climate change.

“Building designers have a professional duty to understand the potential implications of climate change, discuss them with clients, and act accordingly"

“Government should require public building procurement and maintenance regimes to consider future climate change and the development of buildings with adaptive capacity,” recommends the report. “Clients should adopt appropriate procurement strategies and look to appoint competent building designers to manage the risk from climate change of stranding the assets they build.”

The report adds: “The technical challenge of adapting to future climate change in the built environment is to optimise building design now for the most effective phased transition to what will be needed in the future.  Since the lives of buildings are measured in decades, this means anticipating the future and developing a gradual adaptation strategy that makes use of maintenance cycles for timely, effective and proportionate upgrades.”

While the report recognises that any change in legislation should be avoided, it stresses the need to use regulations as a driver to prompt the design community into embracing this new thinking required.

In particular the report highlights the impact of climate change on the temperature of houses and commercial buildings in the future noting that current Building Regulations ‘do not account for the health risks from overheating now or in the future’, 

“It is not so much about installing solution but about preparing the building to accept available solutions in the future,” Sanand Prasad

It concludes that ‘a standard or requirement is needed in order to ensure new homes are built to take account of the health risks of overheating now and in the future’ and recommends that building design firms should “incorporate the adaptation design process into their project management in the same way that tabs are kept on, for example, regulatory compliance or health and safety”.

“Building designers have a professional duty to understand the potential implications of climate change, discuss them with clients, and act accordingly,” says the report. 

“Over time, it seems likely that liabilities will arise for building designers to take reasonable account of future climate change,” it adds. “As a consequence, building designers should at least inform clients about climate change risks, and record the outcome.”

Former RIBA president Sunand Prasad, also speaking at the report launch, agreed that it was crucial for designers  to persuade clients to embrace this thinking but added that it didn’t necessarily mean spending more money.

“It is not so much about installing solution but about preparing the building to accept available solutions in the future,” he said pointing out that clients increasingly understood they had to manage the risk of a changing climate. “If the climate is changing then buildings need to be ready - because they will be there for a long time.” 

Key recommendations include:

• Professional institutions in the built environment should raise climate change adaptation up their list of priority concerns.
• Professional institutions should update standard terms and conditions for professional contracts and project management practice to account for climate change adaptation services.

• Building design firms should incorporate the adaptation design process into their project management in the same way that tabs are kept on, for example, regulatory compliance or health and safety.
• Government should co-ordinate the updating of standards, planning and Building Regulations to accommodate climate change adaptation as soon as possible. 
• The use of future weather data should be required by the Building Regulations at their next revision, and could mandate a key role for phased adaptation plans as a way to allow for phased adaptation
• Government should require public building procurement and maintenance regimes to consider future climate change and the development of buildings with adaptive capacity.

According to Mark Wray, lead technologist, built environment at Innovate UK, the need to adapt buildings to meet a changing climate is compelling:

• 4,000 people per year die from extreme weather events in the EU
• 2,000 in the UK during the heatwave in August 2003, which is predicted to be the norm by 2080
• €451BN economic losses attributed to extreme weather events in the EU,  €300BN to flooding since 1980
• Productivity levels decline by up to 20% if thermal comfort levels are exceeded

But he added that the potential rewards were huge:

• Global adaptation and resilience sales in all construction £22BN rising 6% per year, with design services being approx. £9BN
• UK adaptation and resilience sales in construction £655M, with design services £272M rising 7% per year.
• Small niche market compared to £90BN construction sector