Shifting Priorities: How Does the Asset Manager Evaluate and Prioritise the Lowest Carbon Option, the Retrofit? (United Kingdom)

As societies’ ultimate priorities shift, those running asset management departments need to adapt the way they prioritise spending, to better favour whole life cost and whole life carbon considerations - which will likely (and should) result in more decisions to retrofit ahead of brown- or green-field (re)developments. 

In every country the construction sector contributions to carbon emissions ranks among the top industry sectors. Innovation is making us ever more efficient but the step change required can only be achieved by reducing the number of new construction schemes we take through to capital delivery. 

This shouldn’t be hard. Many of the factors that lead us to choose new construction projects can be adapted. The best performing asset owning organisations have robust processes for developing capital programmes, ensuring that a rigorous defence is made for potential projects, using classical business case techniques and multi-criteria analyses. As we embrace the need for change to adapt to the changing climate, we are going to find that often the Retrofit is the best option. 

In this webinar we explore some of the ways in which Asset Managers can work with simple methods or advanced tools to develop capital programmes that have radically lower carbon impacts but still have the best business cases, by recognising that the shifting objectives of our customers are shifting the expectations of which projects we prioritise and how we deliver them. 

Presenter:
Thomas Goodyer - Head of Strategic Asset Management, WSP in the UK