First published by Passive House Plus
In the #BuildingLife Ambassador Spotlight Series, we are profiling leaders who have endorsed the Irish Green Building Council’s call to address the environmental impacts of buildings across their lifecycle.
In this interview, John Casey, Director at CORA Consulting Engineers, tells us more about the campaign and why he is supporting it.
Why did you choose to become a #BuildingLife ambassador?
We all have to play our part in changing how we behave, live and work to alter the amount of carbon produced in the world. Some of us in the construction industry have a bigger influence than others. As structural engineers who are involved at the outset of a project when important decisions are made on materials and form, we do. We should use our influence as much as we can to generate new thinking and highlight how we can and should be changing design and construction techniques that reduce embodied carbon emissions.
What are you hoping to achieve with the #BuildingLife campaign?
I am hoping to make a difference by promoting the use of low-carbon materials and low-carbon design along with also showing that the circular economy principles can actually be implemented if we try.
We also need to introduce regulatory change in Ireland to allow us to use and specify the full choice of low embodied carbon materials on our buildings, and to reuse construction materials and products if they are fit to use and suitable.
Can you explain a few ways in which you are working towards a sustainable built environment?
We need to speed up the decarbonisation of the construction industry. The only way we can do that is by taking action ourselves; by making changes in how we design and construct buildings. At CORA Consulting Engineers we make a conscious effort in everything we do and in the materials we specify in the projects we work on to reduce the embodied carbon and the impact that our designs have on the environment.
To demonstrate that this approach is feasible and already being implemented in Ireland, we collaborated with the Irish Green Building Council to organize a site visit to one of our current projects—the renovation of the Treasury Building. Originally constructed in 1946 as Boland’s Bakery and later converted to office space in the 1980s, the building is now undergoing an extensive extension and renovation by Google. As part of this project, we reused and repurposed 85 tonnes of structural steel and uploaded materials like stone cladding to the Irish Green Building Council’s Construction Materials Exchange (CMEx) pilot platform, to enable their reuse in other projects. The project is currently achieving a carbon intensity of just 207 kg CO2e/m² (A1 to A5)—far below the target benchmark of 500 kg CO2e/m². In this project, we saved 1,905 tonnes of CO2 emissions, the equivalent of driving from Dublin to Hong Kong 515 times.
We also used this project to raise awareness in the supply chain, including among our clients and other design team members. We try to push boundaries on all projects, in particular on the use of low-carbon materials, the reuse of materials, and design efficiencies. Everyone in the industry needs to play their part.
The #BuildingLife campaign aims to achieve the mix of private sector action and public policy required to reduce the carbon footprint of Ireland’s built environment by 51% by 2030, in line with our national climate targets. The campaign is fronted by our #BuildingLife Ambassadors, who are all senior figures within the construction industry or leading political representatives.
Construction Materials Exchange (CMEx) is an intuitive digital platform designed to connect organisations, enabling them to exchange or trade surplus construction materials. The platform highlights excess materials from ongoing or completed projects, allowing them to be showcased, traded, or reused. This approach ensures that materials retain their value beyond their initial lifecycle, promoting sustainability and reducing waste in the construction industry.
