In celebration of the School’s 10 Year Anniversary, throughout June, we will be publishing a series of Q&As conducted with Partners of the School. For this, we asked each Partner to reflect on the past decade of sustainability in the UK Built Environment industry.
For the second edition of our ‘Reflections From…’ series, we spoke with Craig Murphy, the Supply Chain Director for John Sisk & Son Ltd.
How would you describe the sustainability state of the built environment industry before the School was launched in 2012?
“Whilst responsible developers, designers, contractors and manufacturers have for some time considered sustainability as critical to their business agendas, collective industry efforts and improvement initiatives were sporadic in frequency and, in my experience, more often than not focused at a project level. This meant genuine industry level traction was difficult to achieve, best practice difficult to capture and the pace at which we could drive change or upskill ourselves as a sector was far slower than we’d have liked..”
What impact has the School had on the built environment industry during this last decade?
“The establishment of the Supply Chain Sustainability School provided a vehicle within the industry for like-minded, responsible organisations to share best practice and collectively leverage resources and expertise to effectively address critical sustainability-led issues facing our industry.
Whether it’s dealing with the ongoing risks and challenges of modern slavery in our industry, the transition towards MMC /DfMA and offsite construction, or the more recent efforts to inform and equip the industry to manage, measure and reduce carbon generation; the School is now consistently at the forefront of the industry’s efforts to create a step-change in sustainability performance by enhancing knowledge, skills and behaviours..”
How has the School enabled the industry to drive positive sustainable change?
“A real feature of the School’s success is the accessibility it provides to all tiers of the supply chain, including SMEs. The School has been able to touch & positively influence a widespread and diverse audience, with organisations of all sizes making use of the training materials and reference documents. The scale of the School’s reach and engagement is, in my experience, quite unique, and has provided a really strong platform for the School to effect genuine behavioural change at an industry level.”
Connect with Craig Murphy on LinkedIn.
Learn more about John Sisk & Son on their website