Flavie Lowres, FIS Sustainability Champion along with some of the project partners, discuss why FIS Project Reuse will help address and aim to resolve the issues blocking a more systemic approach to product reuse in the fit-out sector.
Recently, Overbury published a white paper on the upfront carbon of CAT B fit-out called – Counting the upfront carbon in CAT B office fit-out1. This study follows a review of data submitted to the Net Zero Carbon Building Standard consortium, which identified a gap in the embodied carbon (and upfront carbon) data for fit-out projects. Offices are typically refitted every five to seven years (a study by the Financial Times suggests that the average office lease in London is just two years and ten months2). The Overbury study showed that the upfront carbon of a CAT B fit-out is 190 kgCO2eq/m2. If we follow the 2020 design target set by Low Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI), a new office building should achieve 600 kgCO2eq/m2 – meaning that after only 20 years (or roughly 4 fit-outs), the carbon impact of those fit-outs is more than the carbon in the structure.
Reusing products back into commercial offices would not only help reduce the carbon impact of the projects, but it would also reduce resource use and waste. Products, which are typically specified to last much longer than five to seven years, are often removed from buildings before reaching the end of their expected lifespan. Therefore, it is possible to envision that they could be repurposed for use in another building.
Over the past two and a half years, FIS has been exploring with its members the possibility of reusing products in commercial buildings. Reducing carbon impact was identified as the primary driver for product reuse, while a lack of storage was noted as the major barrier to the circulation of these products. While there are indeed many examples of products being reused, these instances are often ad hoc—matching supply and demand in terms of timing, quantity, and quality can be quite complicated.
To address this, FIS has launched Project Reuse, a crowdfunding project to pilot the use of storage solutions and assess whether it could facilitate greater reuse of construction products back into commercial projects. The project will focus on two products: suspended ceiling systems and luminaires, and the storage facility is located in East London. The project has 11 contributing partners – ISG, Overbury, Ambit, Space IS, BPC Interiors, tp bennett, SAS, Recolight, Reusefully, Lumybel and Blackstone Stripout. These partners are not only bringing the project to life but also contributing their expertise to overcome barriers. The project is now well underway: a project manager working alongside FIS has been appointed, and storage solutions have been identified. Some of the partners shared their reasons for becoming involved and showed their continued support for the reuse agenda.
Read the full article at https://heyzine.com/flip-book/SpecFinish_Oct24#page/10
