How Eurocode 7 can improve the sustainability of developments

The new Eurocodes are a set of 10 European standards governing the design of buildings and other civil engineering works. Eurocode 7 is the standard that specifically covers geotechnical design and investigation and is important as many of the risks with any development are in the ground. The new standard is already being used on large public sector projects and is likely to become the norm for all other developments in 2013 when the Building Regs are revised. On the face of it, it could be argued that another set of changes in regulation and the associated expense and confusion that these will cause are the last things that the industry needs. However, recommended investigation point spacings and reporting requirements, which place a greater emphasis on more thorough ground investigation have the potential to make developments more sustainable for a number of reasons. Firstly, the greater level of investigation could reduce the level of risk to developments, meaning more economic designs. The real savings here are in concrete, so you have the potential to reduce the carbon footprint of a development. This footprint could be further lowered as the greater levels of investigation could provide the data to consider more sustainable ground improvement techniques, which use far less concrete and can be substantially cheaper. Finally by employing some forward thinking it could be possible to look at investigating the feasibility of renewable energy solutions such as ground source heat pumps, whilst we are sinking boreholes for the investigation. The introduction of Eurocode 7, far from being an unnecessary overhead, could prove to provide wins in terms of environmental, social and financial viability of developments by creating the data to produce far more sustainable designs.