The drive for sustainability in construction is evident in some of the techniques used in the most unlikely places - a £60 million extension of Birmingham Prison, for instance. The HM Prison Service project, which made Birmingham one of the biggest prisons in Europe, was something of a learning curve in terms of sustainability. And the lessons learned have affected the approach to similar work at other prisons like Blakenhurst, near Redditch. Birmingham Prison saw the extensive use of pre-cast concrete cells which were produced off-site before being delivered ready for installation at the construction site. As well as reducing the obvious security concerns relating to any extensive construction operations at a prison, the idea was to make the scheme more sustainable by limiting the on-site environmental impact of the works. "On a construction site there are many environmental issues to manage," says Jon Casey, an environmental management consultant with Atkins Environment. "If cells are built conventionally at the construction site there is more opportunity for materials to be damaged and waste to be produced. "The idea with Birmingham and Blakenhurst is to concentrate construction at factory production facilities to make the most of the opportunities for waste minimisation and have more environmental control on construction environmental impacts like specifying the right kinds of wood and recycling waste materials." Mr Casey, based at the Birmingham branch of Atkins at the Axis, was involved at the design stage of the Birmingham Prison extension and helped develop the environmental management requirements for the construction contractors before auditing them to ensure compliance. "Environmental impact is a relatively new issue for construction contractors to manage in a systematic manner," he says, "and in some cases there is a steep learning curve, but we can apply the improved practices that have been learned to Blakenhurst and other similar programmes." Sustainability may be new to some but for others it's a more familiar concept. That's certainly true of one charitable housing association that won a national award for innovation in energy-saving achievements in its developments. Bournville Village Trust won the silver Henry (Home Energy Rating of the Year) award for its house building over the last century or so. Its innovation in solar heated housing and its new sustainable village community at Lightmoor in Telford were recognised by the National Home Energy Rating scheme, the UK's largest energy rating scheme. Created by George Cadbury in 1900 to develop the now world-famous Bournville estate in south-west Birmingham, the trust is easily outstripped by several housing associations in terms of its size. It remains in the forefront of housing provision however, for its work in the fields of architectural design, estate management and development and consideration of the environmental implications of any work undertaken, making it unique as a housing association. In building its new houses, the trust supports energy efficiency techniques as well as bringing quality and social responsibility to its new developments. As long ago as 1930, during the Great Depression, Bournville Village Trust built the first solar houses, with large south facing windows, so that they caught the maximum amount of sun during the year and small windows facing north. At the time, these Sunshine Homes, nicknamed by residents, were considered innovative. This was taken a stage further in the 1970s with active systems that pre-heated water going into the hot water system on two sheltered schemes which provided accommodation for the elderly. In 1985, the trust developed the first solar village at Rowheath, which at the time was the largest of its kind in western Europe. Three hundred homes, some for sale and some rented, were built for a wide variety of needs, from flats for the elderly to shared ownership homes. All have some degree of energy conservation and passive solar systems incorporated into their design and construction. In-house architects designed 90 low-cost energy-efficient homes, which have stood as a challenge to the imagination of architects throughout the years. Based on passive solar design principles, the family houses use only 40 per cent of the energy for space and hot water heating than would a comparable traditionally-built house. Waste heat from the generator of a block of flats for the elderly, is used for heating the building and excess electrical power is sold back to the National Grid. High levels of insulation, double-glazed high-performance windows with an insulating blind and draught-proof seals are some of the energy saving measures used. Savings per house work out at between £200-£300 per year compared with equivalent size properties built to the building regulations of the day. More recently, Bournville Village Trust installed energy-efficient lighting into its housing development in inner-city Bloomsbury, Birmingham. Low energy bulbs save 75 per cent energy, they only need replacing every eight years and cost no more than £2 - a boon for tenants, many of who are unemployed. An £8 million redevelopment of another inner city scheme at Shenley Green and Shenley Gardens will include properties built to high energy-efficient standards, which will use passive solar power and solar panels on the roofs with some properties having two-storey sun spaces. With joint venture partners, English Partnerships, Bournville Village Trust is building a second Bournville at Lightmoor in Telford, with all the principles of old Bournville, but expressed in a 21st century way. The new development will be smaller with 800 homes. There will be a massive commitment to carbon dioxide reductions and energy saving, with an emphasis on both environmental and sustainable issues. What will also attract a lot of interest at Lightmoor Village is the Suds scheme - sustainable urban drainage - which involves channelling the rapid run-off of rainwater from roofs and hard surface areas into a series of ditches, pools and marshy areas called swales. The advantage of this is that it relieves the pressure on nearby water courses - which would otherwise be prone to flooding - by letting the water drain through the land at nature's pace rather than man's. | 
