7 Sustainability and the Civil Engineering Environmental Quality Assessment and Awards Scheme (CEEQUAL)

CEEQUAL is an assessment and award scheme that measures and seeks to improve the environmental performance of civil engineering projects through a series of questions and evidence gathering. It can apply across the life-cycle of the project to cover design as well as construction and delivery. Recent updates of the CEEQUAL scheme have increasingly embraced the sustainable development agenda and there are detailed sections that now cover resource and materials use, carbon management, stakeholder engagement and relations with local communities.

Transport Scotland has decided that the CEEQUAL would provide a useful tool for assessing the environmental and sustainability performance of the FRC Project as it is based on a management systems approach that includes:

evidence gathering;
auditing; and
certification.

The undertaking of a CEEQUAL audit is expected help to provide a systematic and coherent approach to tracking the management activities and associated sustainability effects of the FRC Project, within the overall framework of best sustainability practice. It will also help to cover areas not routinely covered by the EIA process such as energy and carbon assessment.

A CEEQUAL award publicly recognises the achievement of high environmental and sustainability performance. Awards are made to projects in which the clients, designers and contractors go beyond the legal and environmental minima to achieve distinctive environmental and sustainability standards of performance.

Undertaking a CEEQUAL assessment will evaluate the benefit of the environmental and sustainability assessments that have been undertaken since the start of the project.

The successful contractor will be expected to join with the FRC team to build on the initial results achieved during the design and preparation stages.