Sustainable Engineering – Using Specifications to Make it Happen

Robert Silman recalls an evening during the 1994 IABSE Symposium in Birmingham when a large group of engineers was sitting around a table at a pub sharing experiences over a beer or two. When the question of sustainability in our work was raised, most had blank faces and a few even admitted that there was no suitable translation in their native language for the word ‘sustainability’. While scientists had been thoroughly examining our impending environmental crisis and architects were well on their way to defining a “green building” movement, structural engineers were largely outside the dialogue. How far we have come in the intervening ten years. Now, we not only all know about detailed issues of sustainable engineering, but we have a full vocabulary in every language and increasingly find ourselves being directed by our clients or our governments to perform our work following sustainable guidelines. However, too often we find ourselves sitting with a great body of knowledge while relatively little is being executed on a daily basis. Sure, there are the glorious demonstration projects where every last product and process is scrutinized to make sure that it is as green as can be. But what of the myriad of other work that is still performed under the same old means and methods?