MoD construction project praised for recycled material use

The Single Living Accommodation Modernisation (SLAM) project is building new barracks for armed forces personnel as part of the MoD's Defence Estates. While the government's Sustainable Buildings Task Group has required a 10% minimum requirement for recycled content in public construction projects, the SLAM project has achieved a 20% figure.

SLAM is operated by Debut Services, a joint venture between Bovis LendLease and Babcock. The project provides upgraded or new accommodation blocks on Defence Estates land across England and Wales. Buildings are based on a model design using either a steel frame built on site or prefabricated modular units.

Defence Estates has worked with the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) to work towards the government's procurement target for recycled content. The SLAM procurement process particularly targeted higher-value items and well-known product areas to use recycled content. These items include steel framing, bricks, concrete products, plasterboard, insulation, floor coverings and furniture.

Dr David Moon, procurement manager at WRAP, said: “The work showed that, by restricting the analysis to higher-value items and focusing on higher-value items and focusing on well-known product areas, the cost of remonstrating compliance with a 10% requirement can be kept to a minimum.”

Risk
WRAP said that since the SLAM project is “fairly typical” of similar public construction projects using steel frame construction, the results “show that it should be possible to meet the 10% requirement using well-established products and materials, entailing no increase in risk”.

Malcolm Gilks, quality and environmental services manager at Debut Services, said: “Our work with WRAP means we can extend out environmental initiatives to include a greater percentage of recycled materials in the buildings.

“Due to the repetitive nature of the project, true comparisons can be made of product performance and cost. The information and data gained will be fed back into our parent company Bovis Lend Lease for use on other projects world-wide,” Mr Gilks added.

Each year, the UK construction sector consumes 420 million tonnes of material and produces 90 million tonnes of waste. Of this waste, about half is recycled, mainly into construction applications.