Centre For Low Emission Construction

Testing new and innovative ways to reduce the air quality impacts from construction & demolition activity and machine emissions - on twitter @ConstructDustUK

Construction emissions

The Best Practice Guidance (BPG) for the control of dust and emissions from construction and demolition was implemented during 2006, by the Greater London Authority (GLA) and the London Councils.

The Environmental Research Group (ERG) at King's College London, with their specialist knowledge and practical experience gained from operating both regional and national air quality monitoring networks are in a unique position to carry out the monitoring and subsequently analyse particulate measurements from major demolition and construction sites and carry out further source apportionment work using data collected from other local urban monitoring sites within London.

ERG is currently working in partnership with several major developers to measure particulate levels around construction sites considered to be 'moderate' to 'high' risk across London. We work with both the construction industry, and with the local authorities, to advise and assist with their particulate monitoring making sure that it complies with the requirements specified in the GLA’s best practice guidance and also to any additional conditions imposed by the local authority through the S106 agreement of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.

The construction dust monitoring team within ERG can offer advice and assistance from writing of monitoring strategies for submission to the permitting local authority right through to advising on the most suitable analytical equipment to use, assistance in the site selection process for locating the analysers, local site operation services to actually run and maintain the equipment or technical assistance for those developers who decide to undertake this role themselves.

ERG have developed an in-house data collection system where measurements from the monitoring equipment are automatically downloaded on a hourly basis in order to allow an effective alert system to be run, where any exceedence of the agreed threshold (site action level) will trigger an alert and notify the on-site environmental manager in order that remedial action can be taken immediately and best practice applied to prevent further emissions.

The measurement data undergoes the same rigorous QA /QC procedures as are applied to data collected from the regional and national monitoring networks in order that you can have full confidence in the measurements that are collected. The quality controls applied to the measurements are of great importance especially if you are reporting these measurements back to the local community through resident’s consultation meetings.

The GLA's BPG also specifies that the local authority should have real time access to the monitoring data and this is made available to them via the secure London Air Quality Network construction website. Both the developer and local authority have secure access to the data as well as a number of web-based tools for generating statistics that provide details of any exceedences of the agreed threshold for inclusion into your own reports.

ERG are able to offer tailor-made packages to meet your individual monitoring requirements. Please feel free to contact Daniel Marsh if you would like to discuss any aspect of the environmental monitoring to be carried out at your own development.