In this article, Viral Desai, practice director for Planning, Environmental Consenting and Communities at Atkins, and Paul Morgalla, associate director for Environment at Atkins explore why a ‘left-shift’ approach to environmental assessment is crucial to tackling climate change
Our planet is in an ecological crisis, as well as an environmental one. A 2021 study by the Natural History Museum found that the United Kingdom is one of the most nature-depleted countries, in the bottom 10% globally.
We must rectify that to genuinely tackle climate change, yet legacy ways of working are still holding back projects.
Our ‘left-shift’ approach to integrated environmental assessment and consenting envisages a new way forward. Integrating a digital-led approach into the early design stages of projects to avoid environmental damage, keep projects on track, and reduce costs along the way.
Pressure is growing to reduce the impact of our built environment
To build resilience against a changing climate – with its worsening floods, droughts and heatwaves – we must urgently recalibrate our priorities, recognising that carbon, environment and ecology are intertwined.
By integrating the protection of valuable habitats and ecosystems into the way we build, we can enact truly sustainable solutions that generate thriving places, nurture co-benefits that mitigate our impact, and grow with our environment.
But the way we build now isn’t sustainable enough. Traditional environmental assessment processes happen too late in the project schedule to enable optimal outcomes for our environment.
If an environmental assessment is only undertaken once a pipeline, pylon, or road route has been selected, or development designed, the opportunity of maximum influence to shape the process will be lost.
The later we involve environmental and consenting expertise, the greater the risk we face of costly redesigns to mitigate unforeseen obstacles. Moreover, the more we can transparently evidence our impact, the more confidently we can invest in building tomorrow’s infrastructure.
A ‘left-shift’ approach is crucial to our low-carbon future
That is slowly changing. The UK Government is currently in consultation on Environmental Outcomes Reports (EOR), a new and welcome framework for environmental assessment.
Yet what we’re designing right now will define the landscape of a low-carbon future, so it’s urgent we start embedding a ‘left-shift’ approach in our thinking. By identifying and maximising environmental benefits early on, we can already start reducing mitigation whilst simultaneously improving its effectiveness, replacing iterative, reactive project design with an integrated, informed development.
In turn, this will enable greater certainty, de-risk project programmes and consent strategies, and enrich business cases. That process, though, can only be sustainable if we prioritise the environment right from the start.
Bringing in environmental thinking earlier is essential
The reality is we’re still running too quickly at projects using traditional methodologies. Take a highways scheme with its first four project control framework (PCF) stages: PCF0 is feasibility, PCF1 options, and appraisals, PCF2 narrows the scheme down to one route, and then PCF3 concerns consent.
Most of an Environmental Impact Assessment is typically completed between PCF stages 2 & 3 to obtain consent. Yet by this point, the window of influence has narrowed. Environmental survey work is expensive, and any redesign following the discovery of a nest of Great Crested Newts or an ancient oak tree will lead to schedule slippage and overspending.
Instead, if we can bring environmental thinking in earlier, we can ensure that a scheme starts off on the right foot, maximising opportunities and minimising risks.
Better tools already exist to help us understand, and reduce, our impact. More comprehensive, accessible environmental information at your fingertips from the outset generates confidence in the project schedule, provides clarity to stakeholders, and reduces the risk of unforeseen environmental concerns.
Atkins’ EAH uses digital technology to better understand the environmental impact of a development
Though surveying work must remain a crucial element of environmental assessment, we can now target it more effectively in tandem with digital tools.
The result is a new horizon of possibilities. Our Environmental Assessment Hub (EAH) automates the quantification and reporting of environmental assets, weaving a granular environmental understanding into the early stages of projects.
EAH identifies environmental receptors and their zones of influence, undertakes a preliminary habitat identification exercise and determines the potential need for ecological surveys. This can be used in an optioneering exercise to understand the constraints and opportunities for a route alignment project, or offer high-level, early insight into the environmental impact of any development.
Data can provide a new blueprint for the whole lifecycle of a project
Digital technology is reshaping our world, and we need to move with it to harness its potential for transformation. How can local stakeholders actively and usefully engage with a doorstep sized report?
Interactive and insightful data can instead provide a new blueprint for the whole lifecycle of the project, opening the project to stakeholders in an interactive, mappable, and visual way, revolutionising the consent and planning process.
However, our industry is still behind the curve in our ability to mitigate impact. The idea of a common data environment to integrate the reams of useful environmental and geospatial data has been around for many years, yet we’re still not close to enacting it.
We need legislation and the regulatory framework to move at the same pace as we are, to enable a more digital future for our industry. EORs beckon one of the biggest shifts in our industry for a generation.
Yet without a concerted push to further realise the huge potential of data, many of the long-lasting, broader benefits of digital tools like EAH are lost. We don’t just need more data – we need better, more consistent, and collaborative data architectures too.
There is still caution and concern about the costs of digital
Right now, there is no way of tying together all the complex elements of the wider system, to produce the real, comprehensive change we need to combat climate change. But there is still caution and economic concern about the possibilities, and costs, of digital.
However, the reality is that we have the capability and capacity right now to enact real change, deploying tools and approaches that are tried-and-tested. The direction of travel is clear for the industry – we need more pockets of brilliance that give our industry sufficient impetus to meet our wider challenges.
That starts by piercing the fog of uncertainty around our projects, so we can design with understanding, clarity and confidence. With a more resilient, inclusive design, a ‘left-shift’ can usher projects towards optimal outcomes, benefiting the environment, clients, and stakeholders whilst diminishing the cost and schedule risks of rework.
We can begin delivering more sustainable projects, building climate resilience and a more stable, secure future for following generations – so what are we still waiting for?
Viral Desai
Practice Director
Planning, Environmental Consenting and Communities
Atkins
Paul Morgalla
Associate Director
Environment
Atkins
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