Otherwise known as Pre-Demolition Audits or Pre-Refurbishment Audits, these exercises are used where the decision has been made to make a major intervention into a building or to remove it entirely.

Using our surveying ability we schedule the building, much like would be done in a Building Passport or Maintenance Schedule. We then determine how each element could be recovered and what its next life could be using the waste hierarchy. We can then calculate avoided impacts in financial, environmental (carbon), and social terms. We work with cost consultants to calculate the cost impacts, we provide the carbon calculation ourselves. The social impacts are the most complex, but also most rewarding to investigate. Existing buildings provide significant social benefits and their removal is often very damaging. Extensive research into the benefits of sense of place, of community, or history can provide some insight. New construction is typically damaging and usually lower quality than what it replaces - see our response to the Scottish Government CE Roadmap for more detail on these points.

We schedule the recommendations of the audit to help project teams to route materials away from ‘recycling’ and to re-use or re-manufacture instead. We schedule local regenerative businesses who can be used as the supply chain to generate regenerative social and financial impacts.