Sustainability report 2009
Ecology
We understand that our people, customers and local communities care about the natural world. We will go beyond protecting ecological resources to enhancing the biodiversity of our projects.
Why this matters to us
Infrastructure can have a significant impact on the ecology of our environment and some of our operations work alongside sensitive ecological areas such as regional and national nature reserves, conservation sites or sites of special scientific interest. Wildlife and geological features are becoming increasingly stressed and threatened due to human activities. Maintaining a rich diversity of species and habitats (healthy populations and diversity of species) is increasingly important to our customers and the communities affected by our work.
Through our operations we have the opportunity not only to reduce our impacts on ecological resources but to enhance these resources through better design, development and management of our projects as well as improving the way we manage our own estate and existing buildings. We believe that delivering projects consistently with a net ecological gain will help differentiate Balfour Beatty in the marketplace.
Our approach
Many of our businesses produce biodiversity action plans for individual projects and a number produce annual plans that set out objectives for managing sensitive ecological areas such as periods of the year to avoid disturbance, provision of protection measures, creation of temporary or new habitats, briefings for staff and sub-contractors on site rules, ongoing monitoring and advice from our own in-house and external ecologists. Increasingly, we use our experience in protecting and enhancing ecological resources to differentiate our bid-winning activities.
Ecological enhancement
As ecological issues vary from project to project, we have found that each operating company must plan local measures for ecological protection and enhancement on a project-by-project basis.
Ecological enhancement in practice
The Cross Valley Link Road near Northampton in the UK bisects an important county wildlife site and site of acknowledged conservation value. Strategies were developed for the management of ecological resources and enhancing existing features. An ecological clerk of works was employed on-site throughout the project, which:
- Planted 25,000 native trees and shrubs
- Deployed protection and mitigation measures for reptiles, water voles, fish, river mussels, birds, bats and badgers
- Created 20 hectares of new wetland habitat
- Grew 1000 willow cuttings in an on-site nursery
- Sowed 900 kg of wildflower seed, some of which was harvested from local nature reserves
- Re-located 400m of species-rich hedgerow and grassland habitat
What’s next?
Our operating companies will be developing ecological action plans that seek to protect the ecological resources and habitats identified within all their projects and own sites/premises by 2012. In doing so, they will consider:
- Ecological resources most at risk from operational activities and those subject to legal protection and local or national nature conservation plans or targets
- Liaising and influencing landlords to improve the ecology of outdoor spaces of our offices
- Implementing protection measures prior to works commencing, including the timing of the works to avoid sensitive times of the year (eg. breeding and nesting) and habitat protection measures, replacement and or translocation of species
Our vision for 2020 is designing, constructing and maintaining our projects and own premises to enhance the ecology of the local environmental, delivering a net ecological gain. In future reports, we expect to be able to report the percentage of applicable sites that have delivered a net ecological gain.