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Bovis Lend Lease was named the most considerate constructor of the past 10 years by the Considerate Constructors Scheme last week. Justin Stanton spoke to the company to find out why it's the best of the best.
In the 10 years since its inception, the Considerate Constructors Scheme (CCS) has striven to promote considerate behaviour from contractors.
Its Code of Considerate Practice requires members to be considerate, clean, respectful, safe, responsible and accountable; they must also be a good neighbour and sensitive to the environment.
Bovis emerged victorious at last week's awards, ahead of the likes of Skanska, HBG and Taylor Woodrow (see results box, right), registering the highest average score from the scheme's monitors' site audits. But this victory is not simply the result of numbercrunching, it's indicative of a top-down approach to a long-held belief that improving behaviour on sites and ensuring good relations with site stakeholders and neighbours is an important part of doing business in construction.
Bovis was one of the first companies to register a site with the scheme: that site was No100 Park Lane for Hammerson on 3 June 1997 - and it scored 34 points out of a possible 40 when first audited. Since then a further 183 Bovis sites have been registered, garnering 13 Golds, 31 Silvers and 26 Bronzes in the CCS's annual awards.
For the past five years, Bovis has been an associate member of the scheme (see box, page 21) and it is Andrew Kinsey, environmental manager and sustainability executive of Bovis Lend Lease UK, who is responsible for this.
"A number of our projects were signing up to the scheme and getting reasonable scores. The reasons for signing would have been varied: sometimes the client wanted us to do it, but pretty much it was an ad hoc thing, "he tells CJ.
"In 2002, the CCS was thinking about creating associate memberships and because we had scored quite well on a large number of our projects and because we had demonstrated good practice we were invited to become associates.
"There's a subscription fee, but in return we get two things: data on all our projects compared with all the projects monitored by the CCS, and meetings twice a year with the...