Sustainability

Sustainable consumption

Concrete provides a durable, competitively priced material that calls for little maintenance through its design life. A major long-term benefit of using concrete is in the increase of a building’s energy efficiency across its whole life.

A key factor is ‘thermal mass’ - the capacity of concrete to help regulate internal temperatures, so minimising the need for air conditioning and reducing the need for heating. Its properties are also beneficial in terms of fire protection, flood resilience, and acoustic performance.

Concrete can also play an important role in helping prevent and overcome flooding through a number of ways. A guide for designers, Concrete and flooding is available from The Concrete Centre.

Fire resistance is yet another strength of concrete. In fire, concrete performs well both as an engineered structure and as a material in its own right. Because of concrete’s inherent material properties, it can be used to minimise fire risk for the lowest initial cost while requiring the least in terms of subsequent maintenance. Concrete and fire resistance is available from MPA The Concrete Centre.

Concrete further intrinsically offers a wide range of benefits including durability, sound insulation, vibration control and whole life costing.