Steve Esau
Hi All My name is Steve Esau I work for a firm of consultants as a Senior Surveyor primarily providing employers agent, building surveying and principal designer services to housing associations.
Location South West England
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Steve Esau made a comment
Thank you Adrian and the team for the course it has been thought provoking and enjoyable. I have enjoyed reading comments and have had some likes on some of my comments. Thanks once again.
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Steve Esau made a comment
I have enjoyed the course whilst I have been involved in sustainbility with projects in the past and now it has helped me to understand bringing the 3 pillars is vitally important to making construction and occupation of buildings sustainable and that it is important in order to achieve this it has to start at the inception and design stage with all involved...
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Steve Esau made a comment
We need to aim for zero carbon on our new builds and also on the existing buildings as I have said before engiesprong on retrofit is aiming to do this.
Designing buildings in the future it is about education and taking the long term view It may take legislation to help with this.
Materials I think demands a big step change developing recycled products is...
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Steve Esau made a comment
I personally drive a self charging hybrid car. As mentioned before I have been involved in passivehaus housing in Exeter and in particular using sustainable materials and producing healthy buildings for people to live in. My latest project is involving engiesprong which is exciting to achieve low carbon in the existing stock creating healthy and sustainable...
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Steve Esau made a comment
I think it is necessary to educate all involved in a project on the 3 pillars of sustainability but really key in convincing a client when there is a finite budget to work to, it is about promoting the long term benefits.
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Steve Esau made a comment
I have not had experience of these buildings. I have been involved in the passivehaus housing projects in Exeter and there have been good things coming out of this. The current project I am working with is retrofit based on engiesprong (www.engiesprong.co.uk) we driving innovation through this to get to low carbon. It is exciting and very important to deal...
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Steve Esau made a comment
I like to think that Madar City can be a global example for others to follow. I just think with the problems there are in the world, governments pulling in different directions, sheer cost sadly examples like Madar City are not going to happen in any great scale.
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Steve Esau made a comment
Environment sustainability- providing benefits to the environment and well being of people who live, work and visit buildings.
Economic Sustainability building economically viable buildings providing long sustainable growth for the building and the community
Social sustainability providing safe working conditions, workplace where there is no discrimination,... -
Steve Esau made a comment
In my previous and current work I have experience of working with communities, it is client driven and contractors need encouraging in general when looking at schemes. I think there is a long way to go to embed the 3 pillars, there have been attempts over the course of my career to embrace these things some have been successful, others not, I think there is...
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Steve Esau made a comment
Health and wellbeing are important. Getting the local community engaged from the start involved in the design, understanding what they want. There are too many scheme up and down the country that have failed because this has not happened in the past.
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Steve Esau made a comment
I would agree that social sustainability is more likely to get missed definately in private projects less likely in public projects which is unfortunate.
I am not keen on more legislation as someone has mentioned before lawyers will find loopholes they always will, ultimately it will be local authorities who would have to enforce they are cash strapped...
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Steve Esau made a comment
I can see the benefits of the holistic approach. As I have said before firms and organisations I work with are doing some of this perhaps by accident. I certainly think there is some good practice coming out of these large projects that can be used on smaller projects.
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Steve Esau made a comment
I do not have any experience of using this approach. I think I have seen certain elements of it. I can see the benefits and would like to explore further.
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Steve Esau made a comment
I have in a previous post mentioned we have recently recruited women into technical roles in my own company and this will I hope continue. Gender equality is definitely improving however on the trade side there is a long way to go I know firms we work with are trying but there is still the stigma in the construction industry that it is a mans world it needs...
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Steve Esau made a comment
I was aware of modern slavery, through reading I do not have any personal experience of it in the area I work in the uk at the moment.
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Steve Esau made a comment
In the company I work for we have recently recruited a couple of women into the firm (small firm only just over 20) which is a start, they are into technical roles which is good. Where I worked previously I had a large proportion of women in my team however these were admin roles. Recruiting and encouraging women into the surveying roles was difficult. I...
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Steve Esau made a comment
The figures are shocking but I am not surprised. In my own job When I chair site meetings I am always surprised that workers just do not seem to learn from the mistakes and we get repeat events/ near misses etc.
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Steve Esau made a comment
I work with a number of clients and contractors who are south west England based who use local labour and SME’s. They invest in the local community they are working in with community groups, schools and other groups.
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Steve Esau made a comment
I think it will take collaboration between government and private sector to drive economic sustainability, legislation would need to change making certain things compulsory otherwise I do not think the will would be there to embrace it.
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Steve Esau made a comment
I have not been to Singapore but have viewed online some of the projects. Certainly I would like to visit sometime.
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Steve Esau made a comment
Reducing travel times
Giving SMEs the chance to compete and work on the project
Help to deliver homes by opening up development sites
Providing employment for people both locally and nationally -
Steve Esau made a comment
I use life cycle costing in my current role for housing associations to model as one of the elements when they are looking at viability of a scheme. In previous roles I have used the above, together with actual reactive repair costs, rent levels to determine whether to continue to invest, deinvest or dispose of properties. Whilst I do not know the full...
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Steve Esau made a comment
I do not have any experience of BIM. I have read a lot about it and talked to various contacts who have it who have told me how good it is. Some of our clients are looking at it, we I am sure will need to invest in it at some point.
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Steve Esau made a comment
In my current role on some of my land led projects we work collaboratively getting all parties involved early on. Previous to this I was involved in leading partnering and collaboration on large scale planned maintenance projects following Egan and Latham, everyone has to pull together to make it work, there were times when some reverted to type, to avoid this...
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Steve Esau made a comment
My experience with recent projects is not enough time has been spent in design. Cost and delivery has been key perhaps at the expense of not having the time to design and get things as right as they can be before we get to sight where sometimes we are faced with designs that will not work and have to look at alternatives and in some cases compromise.
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Steve Esau made a comment
I have not heard the term sustainable project management but can see its benefits, if used in the right way.
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Steve Esau made a comment
Cost is king and will be for the foreseeable future with new housing. For me coming from an asset management background whilst it is a driver, Investing more capital initially with solid modelling to show the long term benefits for both the end user and the organisation I think should be the driver for both new housing and improvements to existing housing...
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Steve Esau replied to Steve Esau
I have had good and bad experiences.
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Steve Esau made a comment
1a I live in an area where I cannot rely on public transport so I run a self charging hybrid car I feel this is helping with sustainability.
1b With me doing this I am helping to reduce emissions
2. I am trying at work to move all of our work to paperless but also hopefully showing with my hybrid car others could follow suit. I know the firm has looked all... -
Steve Esau made a comment
Some examples I have come across or been involved in-
1. PV and solar
2. Rainwater Harvesting
3. Large scale CHP powering district heating in parts of Exeter ( som of my housing projects are connected up to this)
4. Some early examples insulating inefficient PRC Housing, plus heating with at the time smart controls and mvhr.
5. Use of ground source heat... -
Steve Esau made a comment
Planning and design- Passivhaus design for housing
Construction- more use of recycled materials and those that require less energy in manufacture.
Occupancy- I have experienced in the past the use of technologies where it has not been suitable for the end user and we have had to redesign and retrofit. It is important that everyone understands who the end... -
Steve Esau made a comment
The use of renewables and low carbon technologies would help to reduce energy. Where I work in Exeter passivhaus is being used for housing and commercial buildings although higher capital costs the data and evidence points towards reduced energy use and longer life on components.
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Steve Esau made a comment
The figures do not surprise me. With the heavy reliance on manufacturing and transportation I suspected construction to be near or at the top.
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Steve Esau made a comment
The industry does waste a lot so my view is we could increase output with less materials. Some of the sites I visit there appears to be a lot of waste and no real intention to reduce it.
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Steve Esau made a comment
Great week 1 one of learning
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Steve Esau made a comment
I think I have a reasonable understanding of sustainability albeit my view may be a bit narrow and not looking wider which I hope the course will help me to achieve this.
The construction industry is key in driving sustainability in the uk the capital cost of building is a big investment for organization. Value Engineering to get costs down in order to...
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Steve Esau made a comment
I am not surprised by the numbers presented I think they are shocking numbers. It is about raising awareness to all but most of all those difficult to reach. In my country I do not think we do this well and our governments are otherwise occupied and in view not capable of dealing with the wider issues of sustainability.
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Steve Esau made a comment
We have experienced a very warm February here in South West England being able to wear a tee shirt and no fleece this must have something to do with global warming or the greenhouse effect.
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Steve Esau made a comment
We work with housing associations and developers whilst with HA’s it is part of their remit to promote sustainability both in built environment and communities and we work with them on this and this generates the conversation in my workplace. It is more difficult to pursuade developers to embrace sustainability with Section 106 schemes when it is commercial...
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Steve Esau made a comment
For me sustainability is about using our natural and man made resources economically, recycling where at all possible. In terms of the built environment for me it is about considering the whole lifecycle of the building “cradle to grave” making sure we use products that have long lifecycles use recyclable materials, promote where possible the use of products/...