Material passports trial in London could trigger UK materials database creation

When developers BauMont Real Estate and Yard Nine briefed Fletcher Priest Architects about London’s 8,700m² Edenica office development, they requested a design with minimal environmental impact during construction and operation.

Waterman Group, which provided multidisciplinary consultancy services including structural engineering for the project, worked with the architect to achieve that. The 12 storey building was designed to be net zero in operation, with operational energy consumption lower than regulatory requirements.

Waterman managing director of building services (South) Mark Terndrup says particular attention was also paid to minimising the building’s embodied carbon.

The project has taken an innovative approach to sustainability by tackling whole life carbon and promoting circularity through the use of materials passports. Materials passports are digital data sets that contain key information on materials, products and components, enabling their reuse during a building’s operation and at the end of its life.

“Very often things are sent to a landfill because no one knows what they are, what happened to them and if they can be trusted,” says Terndrup. “Materials passports are about helping the circular economy of carbon, reducing the amount of carbon we spend on manufacturing new materials.”

Waterman’s sustainability team was looking into materials passports before its involvement at Edenica began in October 2020.

Waterman associate sustainability consultant Anastasia Stella says the information about how the concept could be applied to projects was unavailable at the time.

Edenica presented the perfect opportunity for Waterman to develop and apply its materials passports solution because of the developers’ sustainability drive. Information about materials passports was included in the project’s circular economy statement submitted to the Greater London Authority in May 2021 as part of the planning application.

The initiative facilitates materials reuse so disassembly became an important aspect of the design. “We are trying to design all the components in a way that they can be easily taken apart,” says Terndrup.

Elements at Edenica which have materials passports will be the substructure, frame, core walls, floors and the precast concrete panels for the external wall.

Each element will have its own digital passport with details such as geometry, classification, location, physical tag and contractor. As each element consists of many materials, information for each material will be provided; including technical properties, circularity and carbon information, certificates and manufacturer.

Passport creation

Without a current standardised framework to define the process for producing materials passports, Waterman’s team had to start from scratch.

“We made a list of what information we needed and had discussions with the contractors delivering the elements about the ways we would make materials passports, to understand what data is feasible to collect and in what format,” Stella says.

Working alongside project manager Third London Wall, Waterman’s team set out a procurement pathway that ensured the right data was collected.

The information will be provided by advance package contractors – Keltbray, Bourne Group and Techrete – and principal contractor Mace.

As they use different tools for data collection which cannot be easily connected, an Excel template with special data fields – for example unique product identifier, concrete mix and reinforcement type – was provided for standardisation.

Stella says the contractors will have to complete the Excel spreadsheet, create a 3D model of the elements they construct, as well as provide certifications and supporting evidence for the building materials.

Waterman will collect this information to create the passports as construction progresses.

Platform

The consultant is working with software developer Circuland to develop the online Circuland Platform, to host materials passport data.

The aim is for the platform to be directly linked to building information modelling (BIM) models in the future, so that information can be directly exported into the platform. “We try to automate the process as much as possible to eliminate manual work,” Stella says.

Ownership should be identified for all the materials passports created in Circuland, with owners responsible for updating information throughout the materials’ lifecycle.

“One of the Circuland platform’s key targets is that from the data aggregation for each building we create a UK buildings’ materials stock database which will be publicly available,” says Stella. “You will be able to not only see the quantities of different types of materials, but also the recycled content per type of material, how much can be disassembled and how much can be reused. It will provide some transparency in how circularity is applied across the industry.”

The Circuland platform will classify and present buildings’ materials stock database information on different levels: UK, UK countries, councils, developments, buildings and products.

It will also feature an online marketplace, with the aim of connecting supply and demand for reused materials. When materials are no longer needed in a building they can be sold to other projects.

“The same passport goes into the new building, so you can record the new lifecycle of this material,” Stella explains.

The platform is currently being developed, the prototype for the materials passports has been completed and data from Edenica has already been added to the platform. The platform is expected to be ready by the time all the data from Edenica is available, with construction expected to be completed in late 2024.

Adoption

Waterman is using the knowledge gained from Edenica to develop a framework for standardising the production and monitoring of materials passports in the UK.

For this, Waterman is collaborating with construction research body BRE, City of London Corporation and European Union research project Circular Construction in Regenerative Cities. Stella hopes the framework will be published this year.

Terndrup says the availability of the framework and the platform will lead many to projects embracing the initiative.

Infrastructure clients have already shown interest and Stella believes materials passports could also be applied to infrastructure projects.

Terndrup adds that future taxes on carbon will boost materials reuse, with materials passports playing a key role. 

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