BCIS at 65: shaping a carbon legacy

Whole life carbon management in the built environment has evolved through decades of policy, research and industry innovation. In this article, BCIS executive director James Fiske looks back on pivotal moments that shaped today’s approach and BCIS’s place within that legacy.

BCIS at 65: shaping a carbon legacy

The launch of version one of the UK Net Zero Carbon Building Standard (UKNZCBS) has marked another important milestone in our sector’s approach to managing whole life carbon.

It signals a continued shift from ambition to measurable, reportable performance and serves as a reminder of how much progress has been made to date.

For several decades, industry bodies, professionals, clients and government departments have worked to establish clearer carbon definitions and stronger expectations around controlling emissions across the whole built environment life cycle.

BCIS has played an important role in this evolution, providing structured cost and carbon data and industry tools that facilitate carbon estimating and benchmarking.

As BCIS celebrates its 65th year, what better opportunity to reflect on how whole life carbon management has matured in that time and the company’s place in this journey moving forward.

One small step for Coca-Cola, one giant leap for carbon control

Modern efforts to manage whole life carbon in the built environment are rooted in early thinking around energy efficiency.

The Building Research Establishment (BRE) played a formative role, improving the quality of housing and influencing buildings standards.

By the 1960s, it had also contributed to the development and strengthening of UK Building Regulations which, by the middle of the decade, included thermal performance requirements in buildings⁽¹⁾.

Momentum increased during the oil crises of the 1970s. In response to fuel shortages, the UK government introduced temporary restrictions including limits on heating and energy consumption in non-domestic buildings and tighter domestic energy conservation standards within Building Regulations⁽²⁾.

To a certain extent, the crises catalysed a more structured approach to energy management. In 1976, the Department of Industry ran a series of energy programmes, from which emerged a new energy conservation market and techniques including occupancy modelling and monitoring and targeting energy use.

Low-energy projects were also initiated. The Pennyland project in Milton Keynes, which stemmed from the Department of Environment’s ‘Layout Study’, explored how housing layout could maximise solar gain.

While conclusions on passive solar design were tentative, the trial provided practical evidence that suggested buildings with better insulation could deliver energy savings⁽³⁾.

It was a study of huge significance, paving the way for a deeper understanding of energy consumption and efficiency thereafter.

Around the same time, embodied energy discourse picked up pace⁽⁴⁾.

Following the oil crises of the 1970s, industrialised nations were understandably concerned about the need to conserve energy.

While life cycle thinking already existed (Coca-Cola actually commissioned one of the earliest life cycle assessments (LCA) in the same year Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon) the disruption caused by the international energy crises helped to prompt a broader analysis of embodied energy as an integral part of total energy used.

From energy to whole life carbon

By the 1990s, recognition of the environmental impact associated with the development and operation of buildings was growing.

Frameworks such as BREEAM and Passivhaus were influencing design and procurement and Environmental Impact Assessments had been established under the Town and Country Planning Act.

These were followed by the Code for Sustainable Homes, the formation of the UK Green Building Council in 2007 and the 2008 Climate Change Act, which introduced statutory emissions targets for the UK.

It was a little after this time that first UK Building Blackbook to estimate both cost and embodied carbon was published.

It enabled cost professionals to quantify construction activities in both environmental and financial terms – an important precursor to the cost and carbon assessment capability within the BCIS service now.

Building carbon confidence

Today’s whole life carbon movement has been shaped by political, industrial, academic and environmental history.

Recent developments, from BS EN 15978:2011 – the standard that formally introduced calculating a building’s environmental performance based on an LCA – to RICS’s standard for whole life carbon assessments and the UKNZCBS, would simply not exist without the years of study, understanding and ambition that came before them.

BCIS is very much a part of this legacy.

Now in its 65th year, BCIS continues to help industry professionals take carbon standards and confidence one step further, having funded and co-developed a free repository for carbon data exchange, cultivated a cost and carbon database to standardise and simplify data visibility and introduced BCIS Life Cycle Evaluator (LCE) to support integrated cost and carbon assessments.

BCIS’s role is to help the execution of whole life carbon management across the built environment become more standardised and data-driven.

Through BCIS Life Cycle Evaluator, the service simplifies the practicalities of calculating embodied carbon and make cost and carbon metrics at component and project levels more accessible.

Such capability is vital ahead of tougher carbon regulation and as the built environment strives for better standards.

Whole life carbon management has been decades in the making. As BCIS marks 65 years of supporting the sector, its remains committed to ensuring this next chapter is defined by trusted data, measurable progress and lasting carbon reduction.

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^{(1) Legislation.gov.uk – The Building Regulations 1965  - here}

^{(2) Lessons from energy efficiency policy and programmes in the UK 1973 to 2012  - here}

^{(3) ResearchGate – The Pennyland Project  - here}

^{(4) University of Bath – ICE – Embodied energy and carbon in construction materials  - here}