The global construction sector is estimated to account for 100,000 fatalities annually and about 30-40% of all fatal occupational injuries. In the UK, although the construction sector accounts for only approximately 5% of the workforce in Britain, it accounts for a disproportionate 31% of occupational fatal injuries to employees. Injuries and new cases of ill health in construction cost society over £1.1 billion a year. The direct and indirect costs of injuries and illnesses resulting from construction are not only borne by the victims and their families, but also by the victims' employers, the construction client, the industry as a whole, and the government. Due to the socio-economic impacts of the unenviable health and safety record of the construction sector, there are efforts to improve health and safety in construction. Prominent amongst the efforts has been the emphasis on mitigating or eliminating health and safety risks through design, which is commonly referred to in construction as design for safety (DfS). The importance of DfS rests on the fact that design contributes significantly to the occurrence of accidents, injuries and illnesses in construction. DfS requires that designers (e.g. architects and engineers) give careful consideration to how their design decisions would affect the health and safety of builders, maintenance workers, and users of built assets. In the UK, DfS is mandatory under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM 2015) which stipulate that designers (organisations/individuals), when preparing or modifying designs, should eliminate, reduce or control foreseeable risks that may arise during the construction, maintenance and use of built assets. Consequently and understandably, CDM 2015 also requires that the appointment of organisations with design responsibilities should be based on their capability. This brings to the fore the important issue of design firms having adequate maturity in terms of DfS capability. Whilst some design firms may have attained some appreciable maturity in terms of DfS capability, others will also be deficient. Whilst there is a growing body of research on DfS in construction, there is lacking an in-depth understanding of what constitute DfS capability. Furthermore, neither has there been research aimed at understanding the maturity levels related to DfS capability. Consequently, there is lacking a robust systematic approach for ascertaining the DfS capability maturity of construction organisations with design responsibilities to pave way for improvements in DfS capability. Borrowing from the popular maxim that, "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it", and considering the significance of design to health and safety, this research will develop a web-based DfS capability maturity indicator (DfS-CMI) tool which will offer a robust and systematic approach for diagnosing the DfS capability of construction supply chain organisations involved in architectural and engineering design. The research will employ an expert group technique and ICT tool development and testing processes. The DfS-CMI tool will serve as a robust process improvement tool to enable architectural, engineering design and construction firms to improve their DfS capability. The tool will also provide a mechanism for ascertaining the DfS capability of organisations under the CDM 2015 regulations.

The global construction sector is estimated to account for 100,000 fatalities annually and about 30-40% of all fatal occupational injuries. In the UK, although the construction sector accounts for only approximately 5% of the workforce in Britain, it accounts for a disproportionate 31% of occupational fatal injuries to employees. Injuries and new cases of ill health in construction cost society over £1.1 billion a year. The direct and indirect costs of injuries and illnesses resulting from construction are not only borne by the victims and their families, but also by the victims' employers, the construction client, the industry as a whole, and the government. Due to the socio-economic impacts of the unenviable health and safety record of the construction sector, there are efforts to improve health and safety in construction. Prominent amongst the efforts has been the emphasis on mitigating or eliminating health and safety risks through design, which is commonly referred to in construction as design for safety (DfS). The importance of DfS rests on the fact that design contributes significantly to the occurrence of accidents, injuries and illnesses in construction. DfS requires that designers (e.g. architects and engineers) give careful consideration to how their design decisions would affect the health and safety of builders, maintenance workers, and users of built assets. In the UK, DfS is mandatory under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 (CDM 2015) which stipulate that designers (organisations/individuals), when preparing or modifying designs, should eliminate, reduce or control foreseeable risks that may arise during the construction, maintenance and use of built assets. Consequently and understandably, CDM 2015 also requires that the appointment of organisations with design responsibilities should be based on their capability. This brings to the fore the important issue of design firms having adequate maturity in terms of DfS capability. Whilst some design firms may have attained some appreciable maturity in terms of DfS capability, others will also be deficient. Whilst there is a growing body of research on DfS in construction, there is lacking an in-depth understanding of what constitute DfS capability. Furthermore, neither has there been research aimed at understanding the maturity levels related to DfS capability. Consequently, there is lacking a robust systematic approach for ascertaining the DfS capability maturity of construction organisations with design responsibilities to pave way for improvements in DfS capability. Borrowing from the popular maxim that, "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it", and considering the significance of design to health and safety, this research will develop a web-based DfS capability maturity indicator (DfS-CMI) tool which will offer a robust and systematic approach for diagnosing the DfS capability of construction supply chain organisations involved in architectural and engineering design. The research will employ an expert group technique and ICT tool development and testing processes. The DfS-CMI tool will serve as a robust process improvement tool to enable architectural, engineering design and construction firms to improve their DfS capability. The tool will also provide a mechanism for ascertaining the DfS capability of organisations under the CDM 2015 regulations.

In a circular economy value is created by keeping products and materials 'in flow' through effective recirculation and re-use to optimise their highest economic potential and minimise the use of virgin materials and external environmental costs. New construction and existing building stocks present the highest potential for circular economy innovation, value retention and creation opportunities, estimated to be worth approximately Euro 450 - 600M p.a. Innovation in the reclamation of currently hard to re-use building products - concrete, steel, brick, from end of service life (EOSL) buildings and their remanufacture into new modular products for new builds which would then be designed for future deconstruction, is therefore a major economic opportunity. REBUILD proposes that materials are directly reused and remanufactured into new builds with minimal re-processing. The project proposes a new circular economy system to address key barriers in the current linear approaches to demolition and new building construction, and build capabilities and tools to create significant new value by the early adoption of novel technologies, high value remanufacture, new system arrangements and the scaling up good practices. The magnitude of the opportunity is considerable. Existing buildings were not designed for adaptation, dis-assembly, or high value reuse. Therefore, the current option is to demolish them when they reach EOSL. In the UK approximately 50,000 buildings are demolished each year generating 45Mt of wastes, the majority of this is concrete and masonry, brick and steel. Of this 45Mt, only a small percentage is reclaimed, mostly for heritage products or easily demountable structures such as steel sections from portal frames. EOSL buildings are treated as costs to be minimised with speed of clearance commercially critical and a subsequent major loss of embedded carbon, energy, materials and potential value. For circularity to become mainstream in the building construction industry, it is imperative that barriers to reuse hard to deconstruct buildings, including using cement mortar based masonry, reinforced concrete, steel-concrete composite structures, which account for the vast majority of UK construction tonnage and cost, must be removed. REBUILD starts the process of converting all current building at the end of their first life and future buildings into material and product banks allowing the retention of high value materials and products for future repeat reuse. The cost of transport and storage means that repair, remanufacture and reuse of products to be commercially successful will need to be regional/local scale. To create demand acceptance for re-used products REBUILD testing processes are designed to demonstrate industry standards of quality assurance of technical performance. Creating demand requires a system re-design and co-ordination to integrate all the activities in the value chain including construction and manufacture, demolition and other key activities (financing, public procurement, planning), in new ways to collaborate to unlock and share value from product re-use. This integration is likely to be optimal at city scale within a circular economy regional hub. This system design will be created and modelled with our industrial stakeholders. The project will quantify, measure and evaluate the magnitude of value creation and product re-use for different system configurations and scenarios against a Business as Usual (BAU) reference case. Continual interactions with the industrial stakeholder group, and through their networks the wider construction industry, will make sure that the direction of our project stays close to industrial needs and the outcomes of our research are communicated to the industry in the most effective way.

In a circular economy value is created by keeping products and materials 'in flow' through effective recirculation and re-use to optimise their highest economic potential and minimise the use of virgin materials and external environmental costs. New construction and existing building stocks present the highest potential for circular economy innovation, value retention and creation opportunities, estimated to be worth approximately Euro 450 - 600M p.a. Innovation in the reclamation of currently hard to re-use building products - concrete, steel, brick, from end of service life (EOSL) buildings and their remanufacture into new modular products for new builds which would then be designed for future deconstruction, is therefore a major economic opportunity. REBUILD proposes that materials are directly reused and remanufactured into new builds with minimal re-processing. The project proposes a new circular economy system to address key barriers in the current linear approaches to demolition and new building construction, and build capabilities and tools to create significant new value by the early adoption of novel technologies, high value remanufacture, new system arrangements and the scaling up good practices. The magnitude of the opportunity is considerable. Existing buildings were not designed for adaptation, dis-assembly, or high value reuse. Therefore, the current option is to demolish them when they reach EOSL. In the UK approximately 50,000 buildings are demolished each year generating 45Mt of wastes, the majority of this is concrete and masonry, brick and steel. Of this 45Mt, only a small percentage is reclaimed, mostly for heritage products or easily demountable structures such as steel sections from portal frames. EOSL buildings are treated as costs to be minimised with speed of clearance commercially critical and a subsequent major loss of embedded carbon, energy, materials and potential value. For circularity to become mainstream in the building construction industry, it is imperative that barriers to reuse hard to deconstruct buildings, including using cement mortar based masonry, reinforced concrete, steel-concrete composite structures, which account for the vast majority of UK construction tonnage and cost, must be removed. REBUILD starts the process of converting all current building at the end of their first life and future buildings into material and product banks allowing the retention of high value materials and products for future repeat reuse. The cost of transport and storage means that repair, remanufacture and reuse of products to be commercially successful will need to be regional/local scale. To create demand acceptance for re-used products REBUILD testing processes are designed to demonstrate industry standards of quality assurance of technical performance. Creating demand requires a system re-design and co-ordination to integrate all the activities in the value chain including construction and manufacture, demolition and other key activities (financing, public procurement, planning), in new ways to collaborate to unlock and share value from product re-use. This integration is likely to be optimal at city scale within a circular economy regional hub. This system design will be created and modelled with our industrial stakeholders. The project will quantify, measure and evaluate the magnitude of value creation and product re-use for different system configurations and scenarios against a Business as Usual (BAU) reference case. Continual interactions with the industrial stakeholder group, and through their networks the wider construction industry, will make sure that the direction of our project stays close to industrial needs and the outcomes of our research are communicated to the industry in the most effective way.

Reducing the demand for new materials and reducing embodied carbon will be one of the most significant challenges that the construction sector faces in the coming decades. The 20th century oversaw a 23-fold increase in accumulated resources extracted, including materials currently locked in buildings and infrastructure. This rate of consumption far exceeds the planet's capacity to regenerate, and has serious implications for global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Addressing this interlinked material demand and emissions problem requires a step-change in practice, and implementation of circular economic (CE) reduce-reuse-recycle strategies, where materials are highly valued and remain in use for as long as possible. However, detailed knowledge of material types and quantities that are locked in the building stock is lacking, making estimation of CE potential unfeasible. This project will develop a spatially multi-scale framework to assess CE potential in individual buildings, cities and countries. Application of this new framework to non-residential construction in the UK will enable estimation of CE potential in the existing stock - at building, city and national level. The framework will utilise bottom-up material flow analysis to assess building level material intensity, embodied carbon and CE potential. This will be combined with remote sensing and satellite data to assess city level building stocks, with demand modelling applied to explore future material demand scenarios - considering different construction mixes and optimised CE potential. The embodied carbon implications of this material demand will also be forecast so it can be considered as part of UK decarbonisation pathways. This will be essential as the proportion of embodied carbon in the whole life carbon of the built environment is only increasing, and will continue to do so as the electricity grid is decarbonised and thus operational GHG emissions are minimised. This research will build the evidence base to demonstrate the role the circular economy can have in tackling these challenges in construction, and provide the knowledge required to facilitate shifts in policy and practice.