Sustainable development is of vital and permanent interest to Davis Langdon. 'Delivering successful solutions that respect the environment' is enshrined in the core ideology of our business model.

Externally, we play a significant role as a leading advisor to major clients. We know that clients want their buildings to use less energy and produce less CO2, use less water and create less waste in construction and operation. They look to us to take a lead on sustainability and help them to achieve their goals.

As a result, we introduced the Davis Langdon Carbon Index for proposed new buildings early in 2007. The Carbon Index is part of our normal cost planning process. It provides a simple, robust measure of the carbon emissions associated with a building (or built infrastructure) over its lifetime, relative to other buildings in its class.

This is an industry 'first’, helping to inform clients’ decision making on the carbon legacy of their buildings. We see this as an essential pre-cursor to more detailed cost and design advice, aimed at minimising the carbon footprint of what our clients develop and build.

We continue to research the energy and environmental impact of the construction and operation of buildings (which accounts for 44% of carbon emissions). This is illustrated by our current appointment to coordinate the DTI’s sustainable construction research programme, covering corporate social responsibility, environmental issues, benchmarking and sustainable accounting. 

Internally, we are committed to reducing the environmental impacts of our business activities. The firm is now developing an Environmental Management system to ISO 14001 standards that sets out a plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as other environmental impacts still further.

Read Davis Langdon's Environmental Policy Statement