Sustainability report 2009

It is now widely acknowledged that even when significant reductions in carbon emissions are made, some climate change impacts are unavoidable due to the level of greenhouses gases already in the atmosphere.

As buildings and infrastructure generally have an expected lifetime of between 20 and 100 years, thinking about climate change today when designing and constructing for tomorrow, will allow us to deliver long-lasting value to our customers, helping to:

• Protect our customers future asset values
• Ensure critical infrastructure will continue to meet the needs of society
• Differentiate our service offering; and
• Reduce our own risks and liabilities from climate change.

Key infrastructure likely to be impacted includes:

• Water supply
• Storm and wastewater systems
• River flooding and coastal defences
• Energy generation
• Transportation networks; and
• Other critical infrastructure such as hospitals and telecommunications.

The physical impacts of climate change will not only affect our customers assets but also the assets we own or have a substantial interest in such as our UK regional airport businesses and school, hospital and roads PFI/PPP/DBFO schemes.

Increasing temperatures will affect material durability, increasing the corrosion of steel, increasing the carbonisation of concrete and accelerating the deterioration of timber.

Higher rainfall and more intense storm events will lead to increased flooding of buildings, roads and other infrastructure assets.

We will need to understand how the climate is going to change, so we can take it into account in our decision-making. We have started to look at techniques and approaches to maintain existing infrastructure in a changing climate, ranging from future-proofing new projects to retrofitting solutions to existing assets.

Our customers will increase their investments in adaptation measures, providing us with opportunities to provide technical advice and infrastructure upgrades such as coastal and flood defences, transportation and buildings.

We are advising and responding to customer requirements on climate change adaptation, most notably in the transport and utilities sectors.

Parsons Brinckerhoff for example, has developed a series of climate change adaptation documents for Highways Agency engineering teams to help them evaluate and mitigate climate change adaptation risks.

We have started to use climate prediction tools developed by the UK Climate Impacts Programme to help us understand how the climate will change in the future and generate adaptation options. Our UK local authority highways customers are now required to take action in accordance with National Indicator 188. Our climate change adaptation support to them includes:

• Reinforcing critical structures for increased resilience to higher intensity rainfall events;
• Increasing drainage capacities in road runoff retention systems;
• Assessing material resistance to high temperature variations;
• Considering higher wind speeds on street lighting and signage; and
• Providing additional roadside verge maintenance regimes to cater for longer growing seasons.

In the US, Parsons Brinckerhoff has commenced a study for the National Cooperative Highways Research Programme (HCHRP) on approaches to adapt transport infrastructure to the impacts of climate change.

Climate change adaptation remains a developing area of focus but one we know will increase in importance as customer expectations for advice and solutions continue to grow. As our capabilities and track record develop, we will be able to influence more of our customers to adopt best-practice adaptation responses.

Group-wide climate change adaptation objectives have been developed as part of our sustainability roadmap. By 2012, our operating companies will have:

• Considered climate change risks and opportunities and adaptation measures for all new projects; and
• Ensured that our own new assets are designed, built and operated to mitigate the risks from climate change.

We will also need to develop adaptation responses for existing infrastructure assets post 2012. By 2020, we will aim to design, build and operate all infrastructure we are responsible for, with adaptation solutions in place to ensure their resilience to the future predicted impacts of climate change over their design lifetimes.