38 WORKING TOGETHER TO STREAMLINE SUDS SCHEMES ROUND TABLE REVIEW
SHARING IS CARING Our 18-strong group brought key advocates for SuDS delivery together with housebuilders and suppliers to share tips for success
bring cost-effectiveness alongside natural amenity, lessening the impact of new schemes, and bringing future resilience for increasingly extreme storm events. The SuDS approach to tackling stormwater fl ows as close as possile to source (rather than ‘shifting’ the problem to watercourses and drainage outside a site) comprises a palette of solutions. Holistic design and engineering can signifi cantly slow the speed and olume of water, while including landscaping expertise can introduce natural features that help to fi lter out pollutants. ften combining natural elements like ponds and swales with below-ground methods of attenuating and retaining water, SuDS can ring amenity enefi ts to residents too, and support biodiversity to help builders comply with Environmental Delivery Plans and BNG requirements. Chaired by James Parker, Managing Editor of Housebuilder & Developer, the round tale included leading fi gures driving SuDS uptake in the industry; Paul Shaffer, director of policy at CIWEM, and Glen Westmore, co-chair of the Association of SuDS Authorities. In addition, key delivery side representatives such as engineer Steve Wilson of Environmental Protection Group, David Owen, head of engineering at Taylor Wimpey, and Construction Leadership Council member Chris Carr (MD of Cleethorpes-based SME housebuilder Carr & Carr Builders), gave insights from their varied experience of how SuDS can be implemented in projects. Representing our sponsors Burdens
were Ken Graham, National Sales Director, Mark Gillies, Director of Technical Solutions, and Andrew Taylor, Technical Sales Manager. They showed how early consideration of design issues and innovation, as well as future maintenance, could bring a series of
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compelling enefi ts for clients, countering some industry assumptions.
SPECIALIST KNOWLEDGE As a specialist merchant supporting the sector with groundworks and SuDS solutions, Burdens has positioned itself as a trusted industry voice on SuDS solutions, including advising housebuilder clients on appropriate approaches – from natural SuDS to ‘engineered’ below ground systems, to hybrids of the two. They shared issues together with other delegates, and gained knowledge on the design and delivery process from them. We worked with Burdens on recent research looking at housebuilders’ views on stormwater management approaches and SuDs. This helped to inform the discussion, and root it in real-world experience of housebuilders.
The round table explored the potential of both natural and engineered SuDS, across a range of housebuilding contexts. Delegates however also acknowledged issues such as lack of Government regulation in England, the dangers of cost-based value engineering, and accountability in the industry. There was agreement that traditionally groundworks had not been holistically considered in terms of SuDS factors and robust solutions to managing water, often treated as ‘out of sight and out of mind.’
By choosing a planning policy route rather than implementing Schedule 3 of the Floods Act to mandate SuDS as had been hoped, concerted action has been largely left to the industry’s own volition. Therefore design approaches, as well as funding and specifi cation of each installation, has largely been done ad hoc according to each client and delivery teams’ criteria, with a resulting variable picture in terms of fi nished schemes quality. The recently updated NPPF has
stronger wording around encouraging natural SuDS solutions, and delivering multiple enefi ts through single solutions, and clarifi es that all proects in lood Zones 2 and 3 or Critical Drainage Areas must include SuDS.
Achieving the right solution for a particular site requires the kind of expertise and knowledge that was demonstrated at the round table. With tight urban sites in particular likely to struggle to easily deliver large areas of natural SuDS, and the amenity these can provide as well as biodiversity and water quality, there is a pressing need to engage good cross-disciplinary expertise. Delegates including Burdens’ representatives revealed how the aims could be delivered with more streamlined approaches – combining lower cost and higher value with effectiveness and amenity, if the right design knowledge and advice is engaged.
The discussion showed that this could mean more time needed to be spent in the design process, and also that some time-honoured groundwork approaches may need to be challenged. But a questioning approach which takes in established SuDS principles, while involving residents, is a no-brainer for achieving successful schemes on our diverse range of both new build and redeveloped sites.
THE DEBATE Ken Graham, National Sales Director at Burdens, kicked off the session by thanking the group for attending, and reiterating the ‘four pillars of SuDS’ as defi ned in s SuS anual showing Burdens’ focus on the broad range of enefi ts and solutions water quantity, water quality, amenity and biodiversity). He said that “rather than seeing water as a problem to be solved,
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