An ENCORD ‘CO2 and Sustainability’ Workshop was held 5 and 6 July 2010 in Madrid Spain, hosted by Ferrovial Agroman SA.

Topics and discussions included:

- A feedback from the review of the individual member companies´ Sustainability Reports – three common key areas were environmental, social and economic sustainability.

- The group decided to draft an ENCORD guide on sustainability. Key areas of the discussion and for further actions in this respect were: continued work on CO₂-emissions, Waste, Water, Effluent, Sustainability Materials and Sustainable Sources of Materials, Biodiversity and Hazardous Materials. Read the rest of this entry »

29-30 March 2010 | Hemel Hempsted, UK

This ENCORD CO2 and ‘Sustainability’ Workshop in Hemel Hempstead, 29 and 30 March 2010 secured agreement on the ENCORD CO2 measurement protocol, and members agreed to measure and report on emission blocks 1 to 7 for 2009 (where the data is available) and 2010, and that this would be taken back to the ENCORD council for adoption. I was also agreed to set a long term target on emission reductions once a baseline figure has been established. There was progress on measurement of waste and material CO2e emissions and presentations on CO2 reduction initiatives of some member companies.

The meeting also started to look at some of the wider issues regarding sustainability, including the measurement of waste, as well as investigating what other areas member companies were focussing on.

March 2010 | London, UK

18 people from 10 ENCORD member companies (plus SKANSKA) held a workshop in London, 9th March 2010 to evaluate the benefits that could be gained from using the ENCORD network for driving improvements in Health and Safety. The host was Dr. Rennie Chadwick, VINCI Construction UK.

Background
The construction workforce across EU countries totals approximately 20 million people – equivalent to the whole population of a medium sized country in the EU. Statistically, each construction worker entering the industry at 20 years of age and working for 20 years currently has a 100% chance of being injured by an accident at work (source: ENCORD Council members, meeting February 2009).
Most of the accidents or fatalities could be avoidable.

Scope of the Workshop
Each of the participants shared current performance data and initiatives.  A more detailed presentation of the Balfour Beatty initiative ‘Zero Harm’ was given by John Dunne.  Fred Garner and Terry Penketh of VINCI provided an insight to the VINCI health and safety management system and its application on the King’s Cross railroad station project, including many examples of how to implement the system in a challenging and large scale project. Read the rest of this entry »

12-13 October 2009 | Helsinki, Finnland

The 19th ENCORD VCP meeting was held at YIT’s head office in Helsinki in Finland. 25 participants discussed
- YIT – Vico software in practice \ developments
- Presentations by Vendors: Solibri, Jotne EPM, D-Rofus
- Update on 5Di progress
- Best practices / what’s new by participants

5 October 2009 | London, UK

21 people from 9 ENCORD member companies as well as guests held an ENCORD CO2 Workshop 5 October 2009 in Hemel Hempstead, UK. The hosts for the meeting were Charlie Law and Jesse Putzel from BAM Construct UK Ltd.

The workshop was called to finalise the draft ENCORD ‘CO2 Measurement Protocol (Rev E)’ which was in the final stages of production. The output of the meeting is Rev F of the Protocol, which captures the decisions made at the workshop. The following pages capture some of the discussions around the decisions – most results are however directly reflected in the revised version of the protocol. 

Topics of discussion included
- the Introduction and Background of the CO2 Measurement Protocol,
- Construction Areas of Operation,
- Scope of Measurement,
- Measuring Emissions including Transport, Subcontractors scope 1 & 2:, Materials, Waste and Emissions in Use
- KPIs

The meeting was closed with the group deciding to
- introduce the next version of the protocol to the ENCORD Council Meeting in January 2010
- publish the next version of the protocol on the ENCORD website, and to
- meet again in the first half of 2010 with a focus on the implementation of the protocol.

27-28 April 2009 | Vught, the Netherlands

The ENCORD Lean Construction Management Workshop was held on 27-28 April 2009 in Vught, The Netherlands and was organised by Richard Bufferfield of Balfour Beatty Infrastructure Services and Ger Maas of Royal BAM Group. 34 participants from Balfour Beatty, Ballast Nedam Infra, CCC, Ferrovial, Hochtief, Royal BAM Group, Vinci/Vinci Construction, YIT Corporation and Züblin/ENCORD as well as from Arpa Bouw and University of Technology of Eindhoven attended the workshop.
The first ENCORD workshop on Lean Construction Management in 2007 (Copenhagen) offered an introduction. The second ENCORD workshop on Lean Construction Management in 2008 (London) focussed on the value creation. This third ENCORD workshop on Lean Construction Management provided a guide to an approach of Lean Construction Management by sharing examples from implemented construction projects, putting a focus on the operational side of the topic. This also seemed even more essential with the backdrop of the current European (and global) economic crisis, in which “Lean Construction Management” as a toolbox of various approaches and methods is a possible way of improving efficiency to meet constrained budgets – ‘getting the same for less’.

21-22 April 2009 | Copenhagen, Denmark

The 18th ENCORD Virtual Construction Platform (VCP) meeting was held at NCC’s head office in Copenhagen, Denmark 21-22 April 2009. Prior to the ENCORD VCP meeting an ENCORD 5D Initiative meeting was held on Monday the 20th of April.
The ingredients of the meeting of the ENCORD VCP were:
- A presentation by NCC about their BIM implementation and the influence of the Danish government on BIM in construction;
- A presentation by Eurostep on an “Open Information Platform” to collaborate and exchange information from BIM and Document Management Systems between partners in the construction process. Eurostep is the replacement for Oracle in the InPro project;
- A presentation by the General Secretary of ENCORD (Jens-Peter Grunau) on ENCORD and the current eight focus topics and the ENCORD strategy;
- A presentation by Ballast Nedam on the implementation and use of IBM Maximo at Ballast Nedam’s Operations & Maintenance company;
- A series of “Bad Practices” and “What’s new” presentations by all present ENCORD VCP members. We chose to have the members present a “Bad Practice” presentation instead of “Best Practice” presentations, to inform each other about things that go wrong in our Virtual Construction projects, and about the actions taken to prevent this in the future.

17 April 2009 | Condor House, London

ENCORD members as well as participants from Skanska met in London on April 16th 2009 for a Construction Co2 workshop. A draft of a Construction industry CO2 measurement protocol and the list of carbon emissions monitoring and reporting drivers for construction were introduced and discussed at the meeting. Revised versions including input from the participants were created following the meeting.

Hosted by: Vinci, 10-11 February 2009, in Paris
Chairman of the workshop: Wolfgang Katzer, Hochtief    

The aim of this first ENCORD workshop on the subject of Knowledge Management (KM) outside of the Council meetings was the exchange of best practice in general terms while focussing in particular on the subject of Communities of Practice (CoP).
The goal was to inform the other participants how elements of knowledge management are implemented in ENCORD members companies to date and what the future plans are and possibly forming an ENCORD CoP. Each company gave a presentation of KM in their organisation which was then directly discussed in the group. Parallel to these presentations, the participants prepared input for a KM mindmap by writing down important key words and subjects inspired by the presentations and their own experience. This input was assembled on a poster mindmap and then discussed and summarised on day two. The summary led to a matrix of top KM topics and their individual aspects. This will be the starting point to explore the possibility of continuing the dialogue either through a dedicated CoP or a second in-depth meeting on specific KM aspects.

Hosted by: Dragados, 20-21 October 2008, in Madrid

Research, development and innovation are the drivers to achieve higher technological goals. Nevertheless, once a company has achieved a technological breakthrough by sheer use of R&D activities, it has only gone half of the way to meet its true goals: bringing those R&D results into its everyday’s business activities to create direct economical and societal impact.
Unfortunately, the road from R&D to production is crowded with a variety of hurdles that very often spoil the research effort done and, therefore, yield no final results. The aim of this European workshop was to meet relevant interlocutors with a proven track of success in the implementation of R&D results into production activities and to share best experiences within this field. The event was organised by DRAGADOS with ENCORD, CICCP, CNC, SEOPAN, TECNIBERIA and PTEC (Spanish Construction Technology Platform).

Hosted by: Balfour Beatty, 17-18 March 2008, in London

Organised by Balfour Beatty, the 2nd workshop focussed on the implementation of lean principles. The main topics were policy deployment and process mapping and modelling. The members had the chance to hear invited speakers and discuss their own Lean Construction experience with them. Existing tools were discussed and demonstrated in a working session using a hands-on example.

Hosted by: Acciona, 30-31 October 2007, in Madrid

The workshop was organised by Acciona and had strong participation both from ENCORD members and partners. This topic that effects society at a whole has special importance to the construction sector: the built environment is the main energy consumer and therefore has the greatest potential for saving vital resources. The workshop programme touched both the global context of the topic as well as the current developments on a regulatory level accross Europe. Experiences with new technologies from many European countries with various cilimatic conditions were presented and discussed.

Hosted by: Ballast Nedam, 11-12 May 2007, in Utrecht

The workshop series was successfully continued with approx. 20 attendees. The group focused on the situation in England, the Netherlands and Germany with contributions from ENCORD members, guests and Dutch authorities. The highway maintenance strategy was presented from the viewpoint of the Dutch Rijkswaterstaat. The experiences with the contract form “KOSMOS“ as used in the Netherlands was discussed both from the companies and authorities side. British contracts were also presented and insight was given into methods for assessing the current condition and making a prognosis for the road surface in the scope of the PPP motorway projects in Germany. Sessions on value engineering, systems engineering and asset management rounded off the interesting programme.

Hosted by: NCC, 5-6 March 2007, in Copenhagen

Lean techniques provide the one feasible way to cut costs while also shortening production lead times and time-to-market, improving quality and providing customers with exactly what they want precisely when they want it. They also make it possible to design, order, produce and deliver goods at smaller production scales by means of dedicated product teams, without paying a scale or investment-cost penalty. The aim of this ENCORD workshop was to present different approaches to Lean Construction and to enable ENCORD members to share their experiences and to form a common base for further development within this field. Interest levels were very high, and the approx. 30 participants agreed that this workshop will be continued in the near future.

Hosted by: Balfour Beatty, 25-26 September 2006, in London

The first ENCORD workshop on this subject dealt with a number of issues concerning the procurement, maintenance and management of high speed roadnetworks. One of the intents was to gauge the interest of ENCORD members in pursuing a special interestgroup. The initial topics chosen fell into two broad categories; those that have a direct impact on the users of road networks and those that concern the efficiency and effectiveness of delivering a management and maintenanceservice.

Below is a list of all previous workshops. Contact us for more information on a specific workshop.