Fairness

The GCCA calls for fair assessment in construction material choices, avoiding preference for one particular construction material over another. Materials should be chosen in the context of the whole building to achieve optimum design, performance and sustainability.

We believe that responsibly sourced timber can have a role to play in building projects but that its sustainability credentials are often overstated, and a number of fallacies have arisen. The GCCA calls for fair assessment in construction material choices, avoiding preference for one particular construction material over another. Materials should be chosen in the context of the whole building to achieve optimum design, performance and sustainability.

We believe that it is vital to put in place fair assessment policies that ensure a level playing field for all materials and avoid biases for one type of material over another, and for full accounting of carbon footprints across the whole lifecycle of a project when deciding which building material to use. Timber has started to receive preferential selection due to its perceived sustainability benefits, which often do not take into account emissions from chemical processing and transportation as well as environmental damage from monoculture plots.

Materials should be chosen in the context of the whole building to achieve optimum design, performance and sustainability.

We believe that concrete is the ideal building material today, and for the future world we want to build. The determined sustainability journey we are on will ensure that concrete plays a crucial part in building the sustainable world of tomorrow.


To achieve the optimum design and performance, comparison of construction materials should:

Assess performance over the whole lifecycle of a building or infrastructure asset

Consider the complete range of economic, technical and sustainability performance issues

Only be made in the context of, and at the scale of, a whole building or infrastructure asset

Always be based on robust data – transparent, relevant, consistent, comparable, complete and accurate

Be undertaken by professionals, such as architects, engineers and surveyors, to optimise all aspects of performance and cost

The GCCA has produced a policy on fair assessment and material neutrality. Please refer to this document for more detail.