Counting the carbon cost of Cat A fit-outs

Whisper it quietly, but across the real estate sector there’s a well-known but not loudly talked about agreement that Cat A fit-outs are a waste of time, money and, probably more importantly, carbon. While landlords are often pushed to deliver offices with a Cat A fit-out because a finished building is easier to let and show off on building tours, everyone knows that the minute that building is completed and handed over to a new tenant, that fit-out gets ripped out. While the wasted resource used to create these temporary Cat A fit-outs can be traced and the expenditure added up, the carbon costs of that cycle of fit-out and rip-out often goes unquantified. Until now. The team at architecture firm AHMM has dug deep into the data to understand what the true cost of that cycle is. Using its own Delivering Net Zero Carbon Toolkit, the firm has highlighted just how carbon intensive the process of fit-out/rip-out is. It is now on a mission to see “radical change” within the speculative office market and a move away from full Cat A fit-outs to lighter, more carbon-positive measures. “With the effects of climate change becoming more frequent and devastating, the need for change is more urgent than ever,” says Craig Robertson, head of sustainability at AHMM. “Conscious of this, the built environment has made commitments and set targets, all of which state the need for reducing the embodied carbon emissions associated with construction. Cat A fit-outs are no exception.” Analysing impact AHMM’s research looks at four representative examples of central London Cat A fit-outs and how these different approaches impact upfront carbon and whole life carbon. The four case studies, which range from substantial through to significant, slender and subtle, offer examples of a traditional fit-out design with servicing hidden above a suspended ceiling (substantial), to designs with fully exposed soffits and servicing (subtle). According to AHMM’s findings, the “significant” case study showed the biggest upfront carbon cost at 92kgCO2/m2, followed by “substantial” at 80kgCO2/m2, “slender” at 66kgCO2/m2 and “subtle” at 58kgCO2/m2. All four were well below the LETI 2020 Design target of 108kgCO2/m2. However, the potential big cost in carbon with Cat A fit-outs comes when tenants decide to rip out what has been built into a building and design their floorspace to their own taste. To understand the impact of this, AHMM looked at what elements of design were “baked in” to the building and therefore unlikely to be ripped out, and which were “at risk” of being removed by an incoming tenant. Using this model, the “substantial” case study took first place as the most upfront carbon heavy, with 45kgCO2/m2 being classed as “at risk” compared with just 17kgCO2/m2 for the “subtle” case study. Where this has significant impact, of course, is on the whole-life-cycle carbon cost. According to Devono, the typical lease length of an office of up to 10,000 sq ft in the City of London is 5.1 years. Couple this with data from BNP Paribas Real Estate, which says that one-third of all leases are renewed, and a formula starts to appear to account for the cost of the fit-out/rip-out trend on whole life cycle carbon. According to AHMM’s calculations over a period of 60 years – the typical life of a building – a whopping 470kgCO2/m2 is emitted through the cycle of fit-out/rip-out, based on the standard (ie, “substantial” in AHMM’s case studies) Cat A fit-out. This is 281kgCO2/m2 more than current RICS whole-life-cycle carbon assessments estimate. The “subtle” fit-out produces 231kgCO2/m2 over a building’s life. Still almost 100kgCO2/m2 more the RICS estimates, but less than half that of the “substantial” design. The research showcases just how wasteful, costly and damaging to the environment Cat A fit-outs can be. Andy Heath, partner at Bristol-based office agency CSquared, says the new research laid clear the amount of wastage that the fit-out/rip-out cycle was creating and admits that agents should shoulder some of the blame when it came to pushing for Cat A fit-outs. “It’s about changing the perception,” he says. “We have got to change our attitudes to buildings being fitted out to that standard and thinking that tenants don’t have the imagination to see what the finished product might look like.” Potential solutions AHMM offers up a collection of recommendations to help reduce the impact, from stopping delivering speculative fit-outs at all, to utilising VR and AR, and delivering its “subtle” Cat A fit-out as standard rather than “substantial” or “significant”. “A lack of data has resulted in a lack of clarity about the scale of the Cat A problem,” says AHMM building performance analyst Ella Smith. “As a result, it has been difficult to find viable solutions to solve the issue. However, this report has quantified the potential carbon impact of Cat A and shone a light on the driving forces keeping the practice in place. “There needs to be industry wide mindset change to reform the complex paradigm that is Cat A fit-out. Critically, value must be found within the new ways of working for stakeholders in the industry, as well as the planet.” Smith adds: “There is a real opportunity for the great minds of the built environment industry to come together to develop these ideas and solve the problem of Cat A. And now that the cat (A) is out of the bag, there’s no excuse not to.” Read the report in full >> Photo by Monkey Business Images/Rex/Shutterstock