Innovating for Sustainability
Southeys Deep Dive into Sustainability
Resources around sustainability best practice and targets in the civil construction sector are still emerging. This can be confirmed by online searches and scanning across social media discussion forums. To assess where we are positioned Southeys led its own deep dive about what we are doing. This was also in preparation for the recently published Contractor Magazine article about Southeys.
Southeys innovations help sustainability
What we established is that Southeys has introduced technologies and practices that are advanced when comparing with other hydro excavators, in terms of sustainability.
- our systems use less litres of water per minute than typical, 50 % less, this is due to innovations around the digging heads
- our fleet is typically 'new' due to our relationship with our NZ supplier. Through maintaining a modern fleet we are meeting the Euro 5 emission standards, which is not a requirement for the typically older hydro's many utilise.
- by using a secondary 'auxiliary engine' our operations on site use only the fuel relative to the task at hand. Through separating the engine of the vehicle from the operating unit fuel consumption is matched to real requirements
- our fleet includes a range of sizes in terms of volume capacity. This means we again are fit for purpose and efficient in terms of fuelling.
- technologies were swiftly adapted and used to recover and recycle water at our disposal site. It is not clear or apparent where this option is available at other disposal sites.
Southeys future focus for sustainability
We are pleased with our current position, and feel we are enabled due to our long history in the sector. Our size and infrastructure enables the advancements to support technological advances essential for sustainability and environmental targets.
While we look forward to direction from the sector, we also find interesting Southeys technological advancements have a arisen from a genuine goal to provide the best performance for the market. Coincidentally and fortunately, these innovations also contribute to wider social goals.
Proposed resources for supporting sustainability
It is proposed within a useful article retrieved from a deep dive on Research Gate "The Green Invisible Hand" by Jan Emblemsvag, that with a common standard in place, we can trust in typical market functioning to move us closer to the optimum levels of practices towards sustainability.
The article is also available here: green invisible hand foresight
It will be useful when common metrics are used, and the performance of competing operators can be assessed for their ability to contribute to contracting clients overall impact.
- industry metrics for comparability across suppliers
- essential touch points for sustainability statements
- agreed and/or common focus areas across the construction industry
- frameworks for working relationships
- guidelines to position progress
We look forward to future advancements from our area of hydro excavation. Southeys will be participating in discussions around what and how the civil construction sector can contribute through various media and our membership body Civil Contractors Auckland.
Feedback here