Sector: Waste & Recycling

December 10th 2025

Knowledge Type

Guidance/Good practice

Organisation

AECOM
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Specifying For Circularity

Produced by the Forum for Circular Infrastructure and authored by AECOM, this white paper offers practical guidance on embedding circularity into infrastructure project specifications. It outlines how clients can define circularity objectives, develop performance-based outcomes, enable innovation, and align with emerging standards. The document is intended to support more consistent, resource-efficient delivery across project and framework contracts.

Attachments

Specifying for circularity
19th May 2025

Knowledge Type

Video

Organisation

Major Projects Association
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Video: ‘No Planet B! So, what can I do?’ Major Projects Sustainability Playbook

Following our seminar ‘No Planet B! So, what can I do?‘ held in April 2024, the Association worked hard with colleagues from KPMG to create a Sustainability Playbook which incorporates key lessons and learnings from the event.

The Major Projects Sustainability Playbook was developed to support project professionals in defining, procuring, designing, constructing and operating sustainable projects. It complements and signposts the myriad of existing guidance and standards that already exist for professionals from all project lifecycles stages, aiming to support practitioners of all types. Going beyond cost, time, scope and risk, this playbook aims to support project teams to consider nature and biodiversity, carbon and the environment, resilience and adaptation, and social value throughout a project lifecycle. 

In this presentation, Janet Greenwood, Global Lead for Sustainable Infrastructure at KPMG and Chair of the Sustainability Ambassador Network, presents the Sustainability Playbook’s origins and outlines how the Playbook supports professionals to embed sustainability into every phase of major projects.

This presentation was given at the virtual event Building Green Britain – The projects we need, in a culture that delivers on 30th April 2025.

Access the Playbook here: Major Projects Sustainability Playbook | Major Projects Association.

Find out more about the Major Projects Association Sustainability Ambassador Network here.

1st December 2024
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The National Circular Economy Strategy (Germany) – Fundamentals For The Process Of Transforming To A Circular Economy

As project professionals in the UK increasingly face the challenges of resource scarcity, supply chain resilience, and decarbonisation, the German National Circular Economy Strategy (NCES) offers timely and transferable insights. These documents outline Germany’s comprehensive and systemic approach to embedding circularity across its economy, industrial base, and public policy.

Translated from German, the NCES documents serve as both a roadmap and strategic framework for transforming linear economic systems into circular models. They reflect Germany’s ambition to reduce primary raw material consumption, increase use of secondary resources, and reinforce climate goals through sustainable production and consumption. Importantly, the strategy aligns closely with the European Union’s Circular Economy Action Plan and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, particularly in decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation.

For UK professionals involved in major projects, particularly in construction, manufacturing, public procurement, and environmental policy, this strategy provides valuable comparative policy thinking and practical measures that could inform similar efforts in the UK. Key themes include the integration of digital technologies such as digital product passports and BIM, lifecycle-based product and building design, resource-efficient procurement, and legislative innovation.

Attachments

The National Circular Economy Strategy - Fundamentals for the process of transforming to a circular economy The National Circular Economy Strategy - Summary
October 28th 2022

Knowledge Type

Case Study

Organisation

Institution of Civil Engineers

Major Project

Tideway Crossrail British Antarctic Survey Infrastructure Modernisation Programme Anglian Water Strategic Pipeline Alliance
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A Systems Approach To Infrastructure Delivery

The second report from ICE’s Systems Approach to Infrastructure Delivery review shows how infrastructure projects, programmes, and supply chain businesses are using systems thinking to deliver better outcomes.

In December 2020, ICE published the findings of a major review into improving the delivery of major infrastructure projects.

A Systems Approach to Infrastructure Delivery (SAID) concluded that the infrastructure sector too often struggles to cope with projects that require the planning delivery and integration of complex systems.

SAID also found that the services provided by infrastructure operators are increasingly dependent on technology and software that is evolving at a far faster rate than the lifecycle of the road, tunnel or other structure in which they are embedded.

All of this means that while traditional civil engineering remains a large capital cost, a construction focused approach to bringing new and upgraded infrastructure into operation looks increasingly obsolete.

The SAID report proposed eight principles for a new approach that is grounded in systems thinking.

In this second report, those principles are used to analyse the real-world experience of five projects and programmes: Tideway, Crossrail, East West Rail, the British Antarctic Survey’s Infrastructure Modernisation Programme and Anglian Water’s Strategic Pipeline Alliance.

It also draws on insight from Costain about the challenges of developing the capability to adopt a systems approach within a large supply-chain business.

The insight from these deep-dive case studies will help other projects and practitioners unlock the benefits of a Systems Approach to Infrastructure Delivery.

Attachments

A Systems Approach to Infrastructure Delivery
4th February 2022

Knowledge Type

Podcast

Organisation

Major Projects Association
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Podcast: Don’t Mention Major Projects (The COP26 Podcast -Part Two)

Summary

The scale of changes needed for climate repair and to meet Net Zero targets mean they cannot be delivered through incremental change alone or at their current pace. We need to transform fundamental aspects of industry and society and therefore we need major projects to deliver – and quickly. But how do we deliver these major projects without adding to the carbon challenge or biodiversity loss?

This is the second part of a two part podcast recorded on location in Glasgow during the CoP26 Conference in Autumn 2021. In the episode, Claire Gott of WSP issues the panelists with a challenge to share the ONE thing they propose as a call to action for their stakeholders and the Government; the one thing that would enable major projects to drive Net Zero, rather than contributing to the problem.