Understanding and predicting construction waste

For the last 12 years, Building Research Establishment (BRE) has been working on developing better data in terms of the amount and type of waste being produced as a result of construction activity. The means of collecting and aggregating these data have been refined over the years to arrive at the current large-scale and long-term benchmarking exercise being undertaken by way of BRE’s site waste management planning tool – Smartwaste Plan. Concurrently, a 3 year project ‘Understanding and predicting construction waste’ has been funded by Defra to develop robust reporting procedures and detailed waste benchmarks. A further objective is to demonstrate the use of such benchmarks as a means of predicting the amount and type of waste likely to be produced as a result of construction activity on a local and regional basis. This is potentially useful in working out gaps in suitable resource management facilities or under/over capacity relating to reprocessing specific waste materials. Interim results from these activities, conclusions and future/ongoing work are summarised in this paper. A range of performance indicators for waste arisings from new build construction were produced for a variety of different project types and for different waste types. These performance indicators have been use to produce benchmarks for standard, good and best practice.