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ROUND TABLE REPORT
combination of green (natural) and grey (artificial/engineered) SuDS features was most likely in housing projects.
But did our round table agree that combining green SuDS with engineered solutions in an integrated water management approach was the most realistic solution? Charlotte Markey commented: “It’s absolutely fundamental if you’re in an urban environment – why are you just doing a blue roof if you can have a biodiverse layer and integrate it with a whole raft of other solutions like tree pits and rain gardens with an engineered approach beneath?” Sue Illman, Illman Young posed the question: ‘How do we ensure that all the built environment professionals fully understand SuDS and the multiplicity of ways that they can be designed into projects? Why is collaboration between architects and engineers and other professions essential on SuDS, and how to make it happen? Is this part of the answer to making it integral to an overall project design (and include it early in process)? Chris Carr candidly admitted that for his firm, “there is a hierarchy, and landscaping comes at the bottom of it, they have to deliver the best they can with the engineered design, SuDS, highways and everything else; you can’t lead with landscaping, it would never work.” He continued by saying “when the engineer’s finished, then look at how to incorporate landscaping into it, not as ‘individuals in silos.’” He added that “my first priority as a developer is to build a home I can sell, and everything else has to work around that.” However, Sue Illman and Charlotte Markey defended the importance of prioritising landscape architecture in the process, Sue asserted: “We do it the other way around,” and Charlotte added that it was “hugely frightening that you can’t have a landscape- led approach.” She claimed that “we are getting used to such a terrible baseline in this country where infrastructure just becomes dominant.” Sue added: “It’s about understanding flows, and where you need to have your main features, and frankly anyone who understands topography can do that.”
Charlotte cited how Polypipe Civils and Green Urbanisation is working with EPG (Steve Wilson from EPG was in attendance), as one example of collaboration, “because we want to encourage a wider raft of solutions.” She added that with Schedule 3 being implemented, “hopefully green solutions will be adoptable, but that doesn’t mean you have to take a purist perspective.” She admitted
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that using plastic underground for the engineered element of a project “was a legitimate concern,” but that greater awareness was needed of the fact that “a lot of companies now don’t use virgin plastics, or are looking at alternative solutions.” She adds: “In some instances there might be a necessity to combine approaches when you have a lack of space.” Steve Wilson continued the theme, telling developer clients that they should be aiming for a “fully natural system on the surface,” but he also admitted that their site constraints “will push you to put some plastic structures in there.” He also described how the Environment Agency had precipitated an exponential rise in requirements for storage on projects to account for future climate change-driven flooding, which has climbed to 40%. He said this meant “a massive amount of storage, which could make a project unviable.” However, Charlotte Markey added that “there could be so many instances where shallow tree pit solutions and rain gardens with playscapes could be incorporated to reduce the land take, because people want more for less now.”
Engineering out myths
Our delegates some of the perceived myths, and received wisdom around SuDS engineering, such as the so-called ‘5 metre setback’ rule. This states (inherited from old guidance), that no SuDS feature can be placed closer than 5 metres from any building, however Steve Wilson was keen to debunk this belief: “It’s not going to affect the foundations; a lot of them these days are piled foundations, and it’s not going to make an iota of difference. A comment was submitted by Dick Longdin, of Randall Thorp landscape architects (who was unable to attend the event) regarding engineering-dominated approaches: “There’s often a lack of creative input from landscape architects at the initial design stage, which can result in very engineered solutions, such as 1:3 slopes.” The round table debated whether overly engineer-led solutions could mean a risk of a ‘pipe to a crater at the end of the site.’ There was general consensus that SuDS can much simpler to get right than many believe, given early collaboration between landscape experts and engineers on schemes. Alternatively if left to engineers, the result can be steep-sided SuDS features schemes
ADF JANUARY 2024
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