Environmental Business Council of New England, Inc.’s Post

From advances in technology and automation to sustainability efforts, the future of the construction industry means high demand for project leaders. Learn from Brett Williams, President of the Construction Division at Burns & McDonnell about how you can gain a competitive advantage in the thriving construction industry. Watch our exclusive webinar at https://bit.ly/41UmeXe

"As part of the think tank’s fact-finding work, and in partnership with Constructing Excellence and supported by national sponsors Fenwick Elliott, Gleeds and RLB, we will this year once again be travelling around the country convening high-level roundtable discussions with experts in different regions to ensure that the commission hears from all corners of the UK." "As the roundtable approached its end after an hour and a half of vigorous debate, the panel were asked to look ahead to the upcoming general election and to come up with the policies they would like to see introduced to boost productivity." #construction Building Magazine report's on its first Building the Future Think Tank regional roundtable for 2024. Industry experts discussed many built environment topics such as the importance of consistency in the construction industry, the standardisation of projects as well as the need for planning system reform. https://lnkd.in/ehnS-Xej

If you work for an organization involved in the procurement and construction of roadways or other transportation infrastructure (airports, ports, rail, etc), check out this great new resource: The Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF) Embodied Carbon Toolkit for Roadway Infrastructure. The three-part toolkit includes some great resources and guidance. Part III, in particular, includes useful strategies to reduce embodied carbon. If you're ready to get started, Mantle Developments can support by undertaking an emissions inventory and reduction pilot at the organization and/or project level. https://lnkd.in/guS99jRP

Join us for a critical discussion on resilient growth in Orange County! The Alliance for Balanced growth is our sister organization at the Orange County Partnership - the ABG advocates for smart, sustainable growth in Orange County and the Hudson Valley. Prioritizing water and sewer infrastructure is critical for encouraging smart growth and supporting sectors like #advancedmanufacturing and #housing. Over the next decade, the Hudson Valley will see opportunities in the Offshore Wind/Clean Tech, Semiconductor Supply Chain, and Life Sciences sectors. Prioritizing infrastructure puts us in a unique position to seize these opportunities to create high quality jobs. #economicdevelopment

Whatever your political view of the Green Belt, and its position at the top of the hierarchy of national planning designations, there can't really be any doubt that at present that is how it operates. This inquiry - in which I worked with a really excellent and thoughtful team of people - is a good example. A perfectly ordinary scheme, which might well have merited planning permission were it somewhere else - did not give rise to the 'very special circumstances' you presently need to warrant planning permission in the Green Belt, even where the authority has a housing land supply shortfall. Well done team (who were David Elmore, Bobby Browne CMLI , Matthew Wilson, Lucy Palmer and Chris Carter, plus others!! #planning #greenbelt

For the die-hards out there who can get past the cover of two old-ish white men in conversation... You get to a point in your career where you realise that time has flown by and (much) more of your career is behind you than in front of you. The challenge is to draw upon decades of experience and learning while not falling into the unnuanced trap of the presumption that you've seen it all before and therefore new attempts are likely to face the same fate of unrealisable expectation. I was lucky, I think, to begin my postdoctoral years on the cusp of a landslide election win for the Labour party in 1997 that in turn led to an integrated transport white paper that promised a world beyond predict and provide in which behaviour change would confront car dependence. The Social Exclusion Unit was formed. There was a sense of optimism and professional appetite for change. I did my first scenario development at the turn of the millennium - after all we were entering a new age and futurology was in vogue. Green Travel Plans were a thing. Climate change wasn't particularly a thing. Then the hard yards of reality came - not as much change as was hoped for - road pricing was going to come into towns and cities and across our national road network, then it wasn't. Fast forward and we still await local transport planning guidance while in its place we have to make do with 'The Plan for Drivers'. Cars have been replaced by Symobls of Urban Vandalism and now occupy footpaths as well as highways. Social exclusion is alive and well. We have a mantra of 'doing the same things differently' - a nice voteseeking gloss for technology fix. So what have Derek and I made of our years in the industry - why not dip into the conversation to find out? P.S. A few days ago Derek suggested one of my problems may lie in listening to the wrong type of music. That's a friendly provocation I need to probe further! I'm not sure what he's getting at - I mean I'm writing this while listening to my latest acquisition - 'Spirals' by Blood has been shed. The opening track is 'Age of apocalypse'. 🤘 Derek - thanks for putting this one together. #transitions #careerjourney

Guidance for the construction industry to accelerate change...

Back in the early 1990s I was working on risk assessment in bridge management, alongside research on transport policy and I realised that if we applied the same 'systems thinking' to transport policy, that we applied to bridges, transport policy was nearly certain to collapse. I published a paper about this at the time, that you can still read in the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers “Managing Uncertainty in Transport Policy Development”. Glenn Lyons and myself have now been working on these issues for 30 years. Glenn and I have, perhaps strangely, never had more than fleeting conversations about our shared interest in accessibility and society, so a proper conversation seemed overdue. We took the opportunity to record our discussion, and this hour of indulgence is actually a cut-down version of the conversation. If you’re up for the ride, it will take you back to a bygone era when we had a coherent national transport strategy for the UK, journeying through the age of accessibility planning as we come to terms with the current challenges facing society. Transitioning to Net-Zero will be one of the greatest of these current social challenges, so if you want to hear more of Glenn's ideas then come along to the AET Transport and Mobility forum Webinar on 4th January (https://lnkd.in/ePZ6YgAc) where together with Susan Krumdieck, and Elisabete Arsenio we will be discussing how to achieve system change in 2024. Glenn Lyons Susan Krumdieck Association for European Transport (AET) https://lnkd.in/e6beunB6

Featured in the American Planning Association Planning Magazine! Robert McHaney, AICP, CTP, Chair of the APA Transportation Planning Division and Chief of Integrated Planning at The Goodman Corporation, shares transportation insights in a recent article: "What do you value in your transportation infrastructure?" he asks. "Is it moving from Point A to Point B really fast and efficiently? Do you value trying to develop a place where people want to walk, be, or hang out?" View the full article: https://lnkd.in/gv4tXJ73 #TGCnews #TransportationPlanning #UrbanPlanning #InfrastructureDesign #SafetyAnalysis #ConnectingCapitalToCommunities