Preserving Carbon vs Preserving Lives

In our eagerness to safeguard embodied carbon, there is a danger that we will see a hike in site accidents and even fatalities.

The demolition industry has rubbed up against a multitude of external forces over the years:  legislation and environmental concerns; and allied industries such as architecture, construction, rail, petrochemical, offshore, and nuclear.  

Over the course of decades, those external forces have slowly knocked off the rough edges from demolition’s tough exterior, moulding it into the mostly professional sector it is today.

Today, however, it seems that at least some of those external forces have shifted.   Rather than honing and polishing the demolition sector, they are actively eroding and undermining it.   And they are washing demolition ever closer to the edge of a precipice.

But in their haste to embrace a shiny new world of zero carbon emissions, they are exposing the wider construction industry to a potential uptick in accidents and fatalities.

The desire to refurbish, refit and renovate existing structures rather than demolish them will, without question, start a gold rush within the UK’s built environment.  The whiff of quick cash will attract the professional and unprofessional in equal measure.

But the refurbishment sector does not yet have the same level of training and competence accreditation that demolition has set in place.  So, like the Californian Gold Rush, it will attract many armed with little more than a sledgehammer, a keen sense of adventure, and a scant regard for the consequences of their actions.

Accidents will increase.  In all likelihood, we will see a rise in site fatalities as well.  In fact, we already have. And all because legislators and regulators have had a knee-jerk reaction to the clarion call for sustainability while failing to consider the wider implications.

Will they be held to account?  Will they be required to explain why, in their eagerness to decarbonise, they have indirectly caused the death and injury of more industry workers?  Will they be willing or able to reconcile the carbon saved with the lives lost?

We have already seen both the UK’s major political parties forced to take a step back from environmental commitments they made in haste but subsequently regretted.  We have seen many in the automotive sector forced to admit that electric power has its practical limitations.

Refurbishment and retrofitting of the UK’s building stock also has practical limitations.  Only those limitations might not cost money. But they will most assuredly cost lives.