Communication and planning are key to identifying opportunities and turning them into a sustainable reality. At South Molton, the ambitious retrofit project had even more ambitious sustainability goals – a relationship-led partnership with Grosvenor meant reusability capitalised on its potential.

Commit

Circularity is a reflex – it drives our work on complex London projects, showcasing our ability and commitment to driving real change in the built environment through transformational projects. Driven by our long-term partners, collaboration was key to delivering sustainable outcomes.

Temporary works inform permanent embodied carbon. At South Molton, we committed to showcasing how thoughtful planning, motivation and innovation identify opportunities to slash carbon and create a new normal in delivering circular construction.

Plan

We’ve been recycling for years, but new technologies mean materials have a clear path to a new life – closing the circular economy loop. Pre-deconstruction audits were planned to identify opportunities inside the building and in its heritage stonework.

The partial deconstruction needed to avoid damaging the architecturally significant façade and salvage the Portland Stone for future reuse. The activities offered exciting opportunities to trial innovative construction techniques enabled through collaboration from project infancy, bringing together stakeholders throughout our supply chain to create buildable solutions.

Partner

Our steel partners at Westok were key in developing the modular façade system. Matching their manufacturing techniques and our Construction Engineering expertise, the team collaborated to create a system that didn’t just champion reuse on this site, but on numerous McGee sites in the future.

Digitised reuse marketplaces were key platforms to engineering a multidimensional sustainability scheme at South Molton. The pre-demolition audit helped identify potential reuse items, however, our collaboration with third-party platforms such as Globechain and EMR resurrected the materials’ lifecycles.

A further initiative, our own The ReUse Network, brought together local community partners to gift reusable materials such as timber, tyres, and soft furnishings to groups who could make further use of them. Essentially a community initiative, it was repurposing with purpose.

Through collaboration, our teams proved that when sustainability is a common goal, new ways of working can be implemented to achieve circular outcomes.

Act

The biggest innovation was the development of a new, modular, multi-use façade retention scheme made of already reused steel. The initiative took circularity for a loop, putting to task existing salvaged steel and shaping it into sections that can be pieced together to suit multiple retention services – including preserving the grade-listed heritage façade at South Molton.

The project redefined circularity in temporary works and heritage salvage with 4,750 Portland Stones dismantled and 282tCO2e of carbon saved. Our façade retention system can be efficiently erected, dismantled, and tailored to suit, while the pre-deconstruction audit also saw 5,500 material items listed on second-hand markets towards a new life.

Share

The project gained acclaim across prestigious industry awards, including the Construction news Specialist Awards’ Outstanding Contribution to Sustainability.

The signature circular yellow steel stands out across London, acting as its own publicity piece, however, partnering with our client at Grosvenor, the project was detailed across multiple social media platforms to highlight circular initiatives in action.

Pledge

We’re working to facilitate innovation throughout the construction industry. It means collaboration throughout each phase and instilling an appetite for sustainable innovations that can drive the built environment further in its sustainability ambitions.