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Beyond Sustainability
Sustainability is necessary but insufficient
Through collaboration and innovation, we work locally to contribute to a better future for our clients and our world. We believe absolutely that we can leave the world better than we found it, not just preserve it as it is.
As engineers, we understand complex systems. Any complex system, without ongoing work to improve it, will decay. While foundational principles remain constant, the infrastructure needed to support those must respond to changes in the environment.
We live in a changing world. As civil and structural engineers we are deeply aware of the risks involved in structures and facilities that others take for granted. We are aware of the risks taken by those who built them, those who operate them and those who will one day have to take them down. We are acutely aware that if we do our job poorly, people may die.
In the face of this, we strive in everything we do to actively make things better than they were, rather than merely sustain what once was. In older times this was referred to as stewardship. The notion that what we do should be sustainable is, on the surface, a noble one. However because it has no component of improvement, sustainability on its own fails to provide the impetus a society needs to improve itself and thus provides no robustness, no margin against the unexpected. Sustainability is fragile. Stewardship on the other hand seeks in a holistic manner not merely to preserve what is but pass it on in better shape than it was in when given into your care. Time and again we see that moving forward is the only way not to move backward; stasis is unachievable in the long run.
At Collective Consulting we promote environmental stewardship as part of a grander notion of what it means to leave a legacy. We promote timber in our structures. We are aware of our place in a greater world, and in this grand context we act to maximise the ecological benefit of our projects. We are also aware of the specific beauty of the place we live, and we believe that the use of timber both increases the beauty of the place we live and sustains the local people who are part of the cycle of timber harvest and regrowth.
Timber
As specialists in timber design, we recognise the unique opportunity presented to us by using wood as a building component, a renewable source for structural engineering materials. By designing and constructing buildings with timber sourced from well stewarded forests, carbon is locked or ‘sequestered’ into the built environment, reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and thus tackling an important factor affecting climate change. In the case of most timber construction items, the emissions produced during processing are surpassed by the sequestered amount, resulting in a final product with a net negative embodied carbon.
Timber is a renewable and biodegradable material, making it an excellent choice for building projects. Our expertise in timber design allows us to create functional, beautiful buildings that are not only environmentally friendly but also aesthetically pleasing.
Let us work with you to steward our environment, and our community as part of your next project.