Responsibility breeds content

Summary
• Timber certification is only one area of sustainability.
• Factors such as gender and ethnic diversity are becoming more important.
• The BRE’s Standard for the Responsible Sourcing of Construction Products is due for launch this August.
• Corporate social responsibility has grown immeasurably over the past 10 years.

If you’ve been investigating the criteria for supplying timber and wood products into the London 2012 Olympics, you’ll have noticed that factors from gender diversity on your board to ethnic diversity in your workforce feature as part of the qualification process. Timber certification is only one area of sustainability, and other sectors have been working on improving their performance on a range of corporate responsibility issues for some years. Many of these may form part of BRE’s Standard for the Responsible Sourcing of Construction Products, BS 6001: 2008, due for launch this August.

As BRE senior consultant Katie Livesey explained, the standard aims to level the playing field between construction products whilst raising standards for all companies in the construction supply chain. “The impetus for the proposed new standard came from continued development of our BREEAM system,” she said. “The timber industry has almost a 20-year head start when it comes to supply chain certification and we acknowledged this by providing credits under BREEAM for certified timber.

New standard

“Yet this gave one material an opportunity to promote its sustainability credentials which other materials couldn’t achieve. To provide better comparability in sustainability terms across construction, other sectors also need a mechanism for proving progress and rewarding good production or procurement practice. Hence our recent consultation on a proposed new standard to cover responsible sourcing in every area of construction products.”

In the international business arena, corporate responsibility has grown immeasurably over the past 10 years, with major companies regularly reporting on their sustainability performance. By the end of the 1990s ‘environment reports’ were common amongst major transnational companies, and these gradually expanded to include social and economic responsibility. From a company’s perspective, the key is to define factors that are “material to the business”: what could affect the responsible development of its markets, its continuity or its risk profile.

The development of the Global Reporting Initiative (www.globalreporting.org) gives an insight into the standards by which international companies are now judged by customers and investors. So how will BRE’s proposal unite the relevant elements for companies in the UK construction supply chain?

“It’s very early days at present to say what will and won’t become a part of the Standard for Responsible Sourcing of Construction Products, but we have taken a lead from best practice corporate responsibility in putting forward our draft,” said Ms Livesey. “We’ve consulted widely with the construction industry, including the wood-related trade bodies. Having only recently closed the first round of consultation we are yet to analyse all the responses, but we’re exploring recognition of existing standards such as ISO 14000 or FSC and PEFC.”

Range of responsibilities

As true sustainability combines economic, environmental and social responsibility, the proposals for BS 6001 include assessment against each of these central tenets. Economic performance could encompass both profit and philanthropy. On environment, the consultation suggested that a transport carbon calculator could help in determining environmental impacts, and products would be assessed over their whole life cycle, from extraction to recycling or re-use for energy recovery.

Social responsibility can be simultaneously complex and rewarding for companies that get the balance right. “On social aspects, we are investigating how to recognise different levels of social responsibility achievement, and across a multiplicity of factors, from women on the board to knowledge of human rights issues relating to a supply chain,” said Katie Livesey. “Stakeholder engagement is already very familiar to timber companies who have spent many years working with stakeholders through the forest certification process.

“At present the Standard for Responsible Sourcing of Construction Products is very much ‘work in progress’. It’s certainly pioneering, and challenging. Eventually it may offer different levels for achievement, for example at company or at product level. It’s not intended as a universal panacea, but aims to motivate continuous improvement, encouraging the construction supply chain to be the best it can be.”