Model Action Plan – Contractor
This action plan shows how you and your organisation can make and deliver a commitment to reducing waste to landfill.
Contractors are central to this agenda, and need to ensure that projects deliver real efficiencies by tackling waste right through
from design to completion. This requires action at both corporate and project levels.
1
Securing
corporate
commitment
Further information
Assemble the business case
Secure buy-in
Set out your delivery plan
- Corporate reporting – key metrics
- Contractor checklist for managing
projects
- Data reporting – guidance for project
teams
2
Delivering
on your
commitment
2.1 - Set a target
2.2 - Embed target within corporate policy and processes
2.3 - Set requirements in project procurement and engage supply chain
2.4 - Measure performance at a project level
2.5 - Report annually on corporate performance
Action plans are also available for other levels of the supply chain (client, designer, supplier and waste management contractor) at
http://www.wrap.org.uk/construction/tools_and_guidance/index.html
Stage 1: Securing corporate commitment
Where are you
now?
Assemble a Board-level case for commitment:

Estimate the true cost of CD&E waste (i.e. value of materials wasted plus costs of labour and
disposal) to your organisation and the potential cost savings across your portfolio.

Identify which members of your peer group have waste targets and have signed up. Identify
commitments made by your major clients.

Assess what contribution a successful commitment could make to your reputation, PR profile
and positioning on corporate responsibility.

Check potential support from your sub-contractors and designers in waste reduction and
recovery – can they help you meet a commitment? What targets have any of your usual supply
chain members adopted?

If required at this stage, evaluate what corporate target to adopt (e.g. based on evidence from
a sample of projects, comparison against sector benchmarks, and positioning relative to targets
already adopted by your clients, peers and supply chain).
(See WRAP resources: cost-benefit case studies; information on other signatories; Net Waste Tool for
analysing cost savings on sample projects; advice on sector benchmarks)
Present the business case to senior management to secure buy-in. This may include proposing your
corporate target, KPIs and the key requirements to be placed on individual projects (such as minimum
recovery rates).
(See WRAP resources: video, sign-up pack, presentation materials, model procurement requirements for
reducing waste to landfill)
Your next steps?
Where are you
now?
Your next steps?
Set out your action plan for making it happen (using Stage 2 below) – define key tasks and who you
need to involve within your own organisation and key supply chain members, including:

setting a target and baseline (if not already approved as part of your initial commitment);

embedding the target in corporate policy and processes;

setting requirements in project procurement / briefs;

engaging with project teams;

measuring your baseline and subsequent performance; and

reporting.
Obtain buy-in from colleagues who are necessary for effective implementation:

project directors / group managers / project managers etc ; and

procurement team.
Note: Your organisation may decide to follow one of several sequences in setting a corporate target and measuring your baseline:
a)
make a commitment to act, then set a target (e.g. based on data from a few projects, sector benchmarks and comparison with targets already adopted
by your peer group and contractors), and then measure a baseline over the first year of monitoring; or
b)
decide on your target as part of the commitment, then measure a first year baseline; or
c)
make a commitment to act, measure the first year baseline, then set a target; or
d)
measure the first year baseline before making a commitment and setting a target.
This action plan adopts the scenario that you decide to make a commitment and set a target before you evaluate your full-year baseline performance across your
portfolio.
Stage 2: Making it happen
2.1. Set a target
Where are you now?
Define the time period for your baseline (e.g. FY2008/09) and your target year (e.g. FY2012/13)
Assess your potential to improve performance:

either:
o
if you have data across your portfolio for your baseline year, check that the data
conform to industry data standards and adjust if necessary (see UKCG data
reporting later)

or:
o
select a sample of past projects and ask for waste data from the SWMP

Compare your wastage rates with sector benchmarks ( see WRAP guidance, or benchmark
data from Constructing Excellence or BRE)

Compare your recovery rates with sector benchmarks (see WRAP guidance)
Assess your market position and potential for improvement:

Identify targets being adopted by your peers

Identify targets being adopted by your clients

Consider what fits with your policy on corporate responsibility (e.g. do you aim to be seen as
a sector leader, or sector average?)
Set your target for a percentage reduction in CD&E waste to landfill (NB this should reflect your
potential for improvement and could more or less than half of current performance)
Your next steps?
Enter your target at WRAP’s web-based ‘Waste to Landfill Reporting Portal’:

Baseline performance (total waste and total waste to landfill) (e.g. in FY2008/09)

Target performance in 2012

Milestone improvements each year
(See Stages 2.4 and 2.5 for capturing your baseline data)
2.2 Embed target within corporate policy and processes
Where are you now?
Your next steps?
Where are you now?
Your next steps?
Ensure your commitment and targets are embedded in company policy e.g.

Policy on corporate responsibility / sustainability

Annual reporting on corporate responsibility

Web site information to suppliers and other stakeholders

Preamble to procurement documents
(See WRAP resources: Procurement requirements for reducing waste to landfill)
Use the Halving Waste to Landfill logo to demonstrate your commitment
2.3 Set requirements in project procurement

Ensure requirements for waste management are embedded in supplier appointments where
relevant – including actions for waste reduction and recovery identified in the SWMP.
Suppliers may include:
o
trade subcontractors
o
waste management contractors
o
designers/consultants
o
product/material suppliers and manufacturers

Ensure contracts provide clear responsibility for the following:
o
cost of waste disposal
o
cost of handling wastes
o
cost for handling and disposal of packaging

Where you have design responsibility, ensure requirements for waste reduction are embedded
in design team appointments and briefs

Where the project client sets requirements and performance targets in procurement
documents, ensure that corresponding requirements are included in your own procurement

Ensure performance requirements are accompanied by clear data measurement and reporting
requirements
(See WRAP resources: Procurement requirements for reducing waste to landfill, and Designing out
waste)
Ensure that these requirements are discussed during dialogue with sub contractors, designers and
suppliers before starting on site (see Contractor project checklist below)
2.4 Measure performance at a project level
Where are you now?
Ensure SWMP has clear waste forecasts, performance targets and waste reduction/recovery actions

Where possible, estimate the full costs of waste (materials, labour and disposal)
Ensure, where relevant, data are captured for construction, demolition and excavation wastes
Ensure data comply with the agreed industry approach to waste data reporting ( see Data reporting –
guidance for project teams, later)
Convert all data to tonnes using industry-standard conversion factors, and measure

total tonnage

tonnage diverted away from landfill
Your next steps?
Ensure the data are used to drive improvements
Ensure performance on waste is included in project design, planning and review meetings ( see project
checklist below)
2.5 Report annually on corporate performance
Where are you now?
Establish responsibilities and internal procedures for collating data from projects to provide corporate
totals, agreeing these with your project managers (and with client project managers where
appropriate)


either:
o
decide whether to introduce a reporting tool such as a spreadsheet template
or WRAP’s reporting tools;
o
ensure your current measurement and reporting processes (e.g. Constructing
Excellence KPIs or BRE SMARTWaste Plan) are reporting performance against
the target
or:
Collate data annually, e.g. as part of your reporting on corporate responsibility
Enter your corporate totals at WRAP’s web-based ‘Waste to Landfill Reporting Portal’:

Start with the data for the baseline year

Upload data annually or at time intervals agreed with your sector body (see below), or
confirm that existing annual reporting processes agreed with your sector body are
reporting your performance on your behalf
Your next steps?
Include your corporate performance in your annual reporting on corporate responsibility

Include KPIs for waste generation and waste to landfill normalised to construction activity
(see below)
(These KPIs will be calculated for you by the ‘Waste to Landfill Reporting Portal’ and/or by the Net
Waste Tool.)
Report on your use of recovered material (i.e. reused and recycled content) in construction projects if
you have data available (see below)
Corporate reporting
Data reported from contractor to Waste to Landfill Reporting Portal, and to client where requested:
Annual reporting of waste metrics:
Baseline
2009
2010
2011
2012
Tonnes
Tonnes to landfill
Construction cost/value
(The baseline year can be set earlier than 2008 if reliable data are available.)
KPIs generated by Waste to Landfill Reporting Portal for use by contractor (e.g. in their Corporate Responsibility report):
Annual reporting of waste KPIs:
Baseline
2009
2010
2011
2012
Tonnes per £100k
Tonnes to landfill per £100k
Recovery rate %
(Contractors aim to show an improvement relative to the baseline year against all KPIs. Your headline target is a reduction in tonnes to
landfill per £100k between your baseline and target years. Also see the Section on Key Performance Indicators below.)
Optional:
Annual reporting on reused and recycled content:
Baseline
2009
2010
2011
2012
Metrics:

% RC by value (reported per project)

Construction value (£)

Amount of material reused on site (t), if known
KPI:

% RC by value (averaged across all construction
output)
(Reporting on reused and recycled content is voluntary, and not essential for a Waste to Landfill commitment.)
Contractor checklist for managing projects
Checklist / Notes
Work with the client to ensure resource efficiency is on the project agenda
Work with the client to ensure that a good practice SWMP is developed and implemented
early within project planning and design
Set project requirements for measurement, good practice and reporting in supplier
procurement documents
Work with the designer to ensure that the following are considered during design:
1. Reuse of materials and components, including

maximising reuse and refurbishment of existing infrastructure;

minimising demolition and excavation waste through reuse on site, in-situ remediation, cut and
fill balance etc;

using products with higher levels of recycled content; and

reuse of reclaimed and reprocessed materials & components from on or off site.
2. Modern Methods of Construction, including:

off-site manufacture and site assembly.
3. Materials optimisation, including

simplified design;

standardising dimensions and materials; and

design coordination, avoiding excess cutting, no late design changes, etc.
4. Efficient procurement & delivery systems, including:

logistics systems;

liaison with the supply chain; and

negotiation of wastage allowances.
5. Design for deconstruction, including:

flexible design allowing adaptable use over the building life span;

using reusable/recyclable materials and components; and

designing for easy disassembly.
(See WRAP’s guidance on Designing out waste and checklists of design solutions)
Ensure that waste reduction opportunities are identified, and recorded within the SWMP.
Quantify these opportunities.
Before starting on site, ensure the SWMP includes:

accurate forecasts of waste (broken down by types of waste);

project targets for waste reduction and recovery during construction;

actions taken to reduce waste during design;

actions for reducing and recovering waste on site, with clear responsibilities;

estimates for costs of waste disposal;

end destinations for all waste streams, providing an estimate of the project recovery rate; and

forecasts which include demolition and excavation wastes.
Contractor checklist for managing projects (continued)
At the start of the project ensure:

sub-contractors understand and buy into the project objective to reduce waste through
appropriate contractual arrangements and toolbox training;

there is a clear logistics strategy (e.g. based on the WRAP Materials Logistics Plan template)
which addresses:

o
delivery of materials to site;
o
storage of materials on site;
o
movement of materials around site;
o
movement of wastes to collection points; and
sub-contractors, suppliers and waste management contractors understand what data they are to
supply.
When on site, ensure the following:

transfer notes are up to date and recorded;

performance is assessed throughout the project and changes are made to improve performance
where required; and

data are reported in the format specified (tonnes) and include a breakdown between
construction, demolition and excavation wastes
Data reporting – guidance for project teams
The UK Contractors Group (UKCG) has formulated guidelines on waste data provision which will bring much-needed consistency
to the industry. The reporting requirements for “Halving waste to landfill” align with the UKCG reporting approach. The
intention is that the following metrics and definitions become standard practice across the industry.
Clients should ask all their design teams and contractors to apply the UKCG approach for reporting up the supply chain. Major
contractors are likely to be reporting against the guidelines as a matter of routine.
Reporting level
Data content
Periodicity of reporting
Supply chain to
project team
Apply the UKCG approach. This includes reporting construction, demolition and
excavation (C, D & E) waste streams separately.

Data may be collected monthly or as it arises,
for recording in the SWMP
Project team to
contractor
Apply the UKCG approach:

Project team should review waste data in the
SWMP regularly (e.g. monthly or quarterly)

UKCG members collate data from projects and
report quarterly to their sector body – providing
separate C, D & E totals by project type.

WRAP’s ‘Waste to Landfill Reporting Portal’ will
support reporting by contractors at different
levels of detail.
The client can ask for aggregated data (e.g. contractor total for combined C, D & E
waste across all of the client’s projects), or for separate C, D & E totals for each
project.

Annual (or on project completion if earlier)

WRAP’s ‘Waste to Landfill Reporting Portal’
enables contractors to submit information on
behalf of their clients. On acceptance, these
data automatically form part of the client’s
waste dataset.
The client can simply report the totals for waste, waste to landfill and construction
value for the whole portfolio (with total waste to landfill as the fundamental
metric).

Annual

report C, D & E waste streams separately;

optionally, classify the sector type (infrastructure, housing and other
construction); and

optionally, classify the type of waste (hazardous, non-hazardous, inert, noninert, EWC No.) and the building type (education, commercial offices etc).
This breakdown of data supports more accurate benchmarking of performance.
Contractor to client
Client reporting to
stakeholders and
WRAP
WRAP’s ‘Waste to Landfill Reporting Portal’ will provide the option to split data
between C, D & E waste streams and by project type (allowing benchmarking).
When reporting to WRAP, clients can provide data on their own performance (aggregated across their portfolio) at the same
level of detail as contractors (i.e. separating the totals for construction, demolition and excavation and by project type), or
simply provide the total outcome for construction, demolition and excavation combined. While contractor bodies and other
reporting mechanisms (e.g. SMARTWaste) may collate data quarterly, corporate reporting by clients would be annual.
The following approach has been formulated by UKCG members:
Metrics
Wastage is to be measured separately for:
Normalising data

Construction1 – offcuts, packaging, damaged materials
All data are to be normalised by construction value, which
includes:

Demolition – brick, concrete, windows, asbestos etc

plant;

Excavation – earth, soils, etc.

labour; and

materials costs.
Only those materials actually taken off site are measured as waste.
Where materials are reused onsite, the contractor has the option to
record the quantities of material reused. However, this is not
included within metrics for waste arisings or waste to landfill
(although greater onsite reuse will reduce the waste generated per
unit of construction output).
Progress is to be measured using the following metrics:

tonnes of waste; and

tonnes of waste to landfill.
1
Clients should decide what constitutes ‘construction’ for their own organisation.
WRAP recommends that construction includes repairs and maintenance operations,
but excludes day-to-day facilities management.
The value should exclude:

land costs, professional fees and preliminaries; and

specialist fit-out items (e.g. for healthcare or retail applications).
Collecting data from projects
Collating and reporting data
Each project should supply the following data as a minimum:
Each contractor should collate separate totals for C, D & E waste.
Optionally, data may be split by infrastructure, housing and
commercial (non-residential) projects. Alternatively contractors may
report in more detail by assigning wastes to the following types of
project:
Project name
Construction
value

civil engineering;

commercial retail;

commercial offices;

Excavation
commercial other;

educational;
Construction

healthcare;
Demolition

industrial buildings;
Excavation

leisure;

public buildings;

residential; and

mixed-use developments.
Construction spend for period
Total tonnes2 of
waste
Total tonnes to
landfill
Construction
Demolition
These data can be collated on completion of a project, or for larger
projects and programmes of work, can be collated on a monthly /
quarterly basis. If data are collected during the project, then the
‘Construction spend for period’ line should be used. This allows data
to be normalised to the spend within that period.
2
Agreed factors will be used to convert waste volumes to tonnage.
Measuring and reporting the use of recovered material
Construction clients are increasingly setting minimum requirements
for reused and recycled content (e.g. 10% RC as a proportion of
materials value on the project). Reusing and procuring higher levels
of recovered material creates a demand for materials that project
teams want to recycle, and makes an important contribution to the
Halving Waste to Landfill objective.
Reused and recycled content (RC) is readily measured using WRAP’s
Net Waste Tool. This quantifies the expected baseline performance
for the project, and the most significant opportunities to move
towards cost-competitive good practice (e.g. the top 10 Quick Wins
specific to this project). The project team can then focus effort on
just a few product substitutions to deliver this improvement.
Where data are available, reused and recycled content should be
reported to/by the client. The Table below shows what data should
be collected for each project:
RC by value (%)
A
Construction value (£)
B
RC by value (£) – to allow
summation across a portfolio
Amount of material reused on site
(t), if known
AxB
Reporting periods
Key Performance Indicators
The reporting portal allows flexibility in the way that data are
gathered. The options are:
The reporting portal will generate a series of KPIs, allowing your
organisation to assess its performance over time. The KPIs that will
be calculated are:

data are gathered on completion of a project and normalised to
total construction value; or

data are gathered either monthly, quarterly, or annually, and
normalised by construction spend within the period.
Whichever approach is used by a contractor, this should be
consistent across all projects. UKCG members will collate and report
data quarterly to their sector body. WRAP recommends that all
contractors adopt reporting by period, rather than on completion, as
this will enable clients to collect consistent data from across their
contractors.
Quarterly collation of data will facilitate reporting to clients who have
different annual review periods for corporate responsibility and
sustainability. WRAP recommends that clients fix their review
periods to fit with the quarterly timetable.
Waste to
landfill KPI
This is the primary KPI to include in your annual
report on Corporate Responsibility when
demonstrating your commitment to the sector goal of
halving waste to landfill.
Waste
reduction KPI
‘Tonnes of waste per £ of construction output’,
reported relative to performance in your baseline year
Waste recovery
KPI
% of waste diverted from landfill during the last year.
Your annual report should illustrate year-on-year
improvements. This is also a useful indicator when
evaluating contractor performance against
procurement requirements for minimum and target
waste recovery rates on individual projects.
Benchmarking
Data can be uploaded into the ‘Waste to landfill reporting portal’ by
project/sector type. This will be used to generate benchmarks,
against which you will be able to assess your own performance.
These benchmarks will be used to show two trends for each sector
or project type:

a reduction in total waste generated; and

an increase in the proportion of waste that is diverted away
from landfill.
‘Tonnes of waste to landfill per £ of construction
output’, reported relative to performance in your
baseline year.
Reused and
recycled
content KPI
% RC by value (averaged across all construction
output) during the last year.
Your annual report should show how performance
has changed year-on-year and compare the outcome
with your procurement requirements for reused and
recycled content.