Stakeholder interviews

Objective 2 was to understand the key issues for materials selection for industry. In order to meet this objective a series of semi-structured interviews were carried out with 25 industry stakeholders. The questions related to three themes; Construction Sustainability, Materials Selection and Life Cycle Assessment. The responses were collated and key themes identified which helped to produce a hierarchy of drivers for construction products. The hierarchy was then used in conjunction with the findings of the previous work package to design the framework (section 4.5).

4.3.1 I

S

The stakeholders interviewed were selected through a series of discussions with all the project supervisors. It was acknowledged that all of the supervisors had different backgrounds and therefore a wide range of contacts. Where specific individuals were not known the organisation was contacted to ascertain the best person to be involved with the research. Table

4.3 shows the list of organisations approached in the study, a range of academic staff, government departments, consultants, contractors, research organisations and trade associations were suggested and contacted. Figure 4.7 below shows the breakdown of these groups; which shows an even split of stakeholders over six different groups.

The interviewees were selected through three main channels. The first being through the sponsoring companies, The second was through contacts via the academic supervisors and the third was through membership of the CIRIA Environmental and Sustainability Advisory panel.

The trade association, academics and contractor interviewees all had over 10 years of experience in the construction sector and could be classed as middle/senior management. The experience profile was certainly more mixed for the consultant engineers with some more junior interviewees but all of whom had at least three years experience of the construction sector. Research/assessment and Government Agency stakeholders had over 10 years experience of work but not necessarily solely in the construction sector.

Table 4.5 Principal stakeholder organisations

Surrey University Scott Wilson BAM Nuttall

ARUP Jacobs Atkins

Nottingham University Sitebatch Technologies Bardon Contracting

Whilst these identified organisations represent a reasonable mix of the various groups of stakeholders within the construction sector there is always room for further dialogue and involvement of other organisations. It was therefore suggested that one of the closing remarks in the interview should ask whether there are other individuals or organisations that would benefit by being involved with this research. This approach could be termed as ‘Stratified Purposeful Sampling’ which illustrates characteristics of particular groups of interest (Patton, 2002).

Figure 4.7 Breakdown of Stakeholder Groups for Interviews

4.3.2 S

-S

I

All of the interviews were recorded digitally; permission was obtained from all participants prior to conducting the interview. Following some of the general advice in Patton (2002) the first 10 - 15 minutes of the discussion were not recorded and was more of an informal conversation about the backgrounds and perspectives of the researcher and interviewee; this helped to build a degree of rapport and to allay any fears or questions that the interviewee may have had. For the purposes of analysis the interviews were transcribed in bullet point form and returned via e-mail to the participants for any changes or comments. Each transcription was then transposed into a spreadsheet for ease of analysis, the clustering method was used as discussed by Miles and Huberman (1994, p248); as per the methodology presented in section 3.3.2.

As these interviews were conducted early on in the EngD programme it was relatively simple to avoid interviewee bias as many of the final areas for development had not been identified.

The researcher was very much a new person to these stakeholders and therefore carried little preconceived expectations.

4.3.3 H

D

– R

The interview questions related to three themes; Construction Sustainability, Materials Selection and Life Cycle Assessment. The various clusters of issues were collated and totalled over the three interview questions. It was then possible to aggregate all of the key themes into the hierarchy of drivers presented in Figure 4.8 below.

Figure 4.8 Hierarchy of Drivers; results from the semi-structured interviews

4.3.4 D

The first question on construction sustainability gave responses based on maintenance and LCA. The issues associated with the maintenance of construction assets such as roads can be things such as traffic management and disruption but these were not mentioned immediately;

rather the environmental impacts of having slower vehicle movements and increased fuel consumption were discussed.

The second theme relating to key issues for material selection notably identified Carbon and cost. The segregation of embodied Carbon and whole life impacts was replicated with upfront cost and whole life cost. This is perhaps driven through the traditional type of contract where the contractor is concerned with immediate and certain aspects of the materials. When probing for issues related to materials selection a number of responses were more project focussed such as ‘social issues’ and ‘asset management’.

The third theme relating to LCA methodology prompted more politically charged responses and some controversial viewpoints. The credibility of data and transparency of the process was deemed to be very important as was the BRE Environmental Profiles methodology.

Carbon footprinting was acknowledged as a key issue; the knowledge of LCA has been taken up by most sectors within industry and in part could be credited to the prominence of Carbon footprinting. Data quality and life phase considerations were also inherently linked to LCA.

To what extent this hierarchy would manifest itself in practice as a hierarchy for decision making or procurement is debatable, practical experience might suggest that the hierarchy

Carbon (footprinting)/Climate change

Maintenance/Design Life

Environmental Issues

Confidence and Transparency

LCA/BRE Environmental Profiles

Material Characteristics

Cost/Whole Life Cost

could be reversed at the point when money changes hands. This was a valuable exercise that highlighted a number of sustainability related issues that may not have been so obvious in the assessment schemes of BREEAM and Ceequal. LCA and the life cycle approach to construction products was a real driver for this group of stakeholders but there was also the acknowledgement that other sustainability issues need to be considered including cost.

4.3.5 C

The aim of this work package was to examine the key issues relating to materials selection in construction through a series of semi-structured interviews with key industry stakeholders.

The second objective has been met through the investigation of three key themes:

• Construction Sustainability

• Materials Selection

• Life Cycle Assessment

Environmental concerns have been identified as being the most important for materials selection in construction projects but the range was limited and focused primarily on Carbon.

Analysis and subsequent discussion of the findings has lead to a number of conclusions:

1. Maintenance issues and factors such as design life and durability are very important, associated to this was the issue of upfront cost and whole life costing. Stakeholders from a contracting background were more likely to raise concerns about cost.

2. The credibility and transparency of LCA and associated boundaries was seen as a problem. Any further work in this area needs to address these issues before actually seeking to simulate an LCA for construction products.

This work package has highlighted that there is a need to develop an LCA framework for the understanding of broader environmental impacts that take into account the hierarchy of drivers identified through this research. This supports the view that LCA needs to be supported by other sustainability metrics and issues to reflect more accurately the issues that the stakeholders mentioned most frequently.