Waste not, want not

When we talk about waste in construction, we often mean demolition, and we rightly put considerable effort into reuse and recycling. Around 62% of all waste generated in the UK comes from construction, that’s over 100 million tonnes each year. That figure alone focusses minds.

We talk about waste on site. We worry about off-cuts, storage, sequencing and logistics. We prioritise waste reduction strategies and prepare site waste management plans. Materials are expensive, carbon-heavy and scarce; we have to make them work harder.

We avoid energy waste by designing more efficient buildings reducing impact on natural resources.

We also use the word ‘waste’ at the design stage when planning efficient bin stores. Efficiency of space matters, as do the strategies that influence operational costs, service charges and residents’ enjoyment of their homes. Well-designed but ‘lean’ matters.

These varied notions of waste are measurable and, to an extent, manageable. We accept that waste can never be eliminated entirely, but we understand its environmental impact, its effect on development efficiency and its potential consequences on quality of life if designed poorly.

But the waste I really want to shout about is not rubble or refuse but the waste of time, resources and money embedded in the way our industry often operates.

Construction is, by necessity, process driven. Design is iterative. Consultation is an essential. Multiple stakeholders and forces shape outcomes and time is often what allows better solutions to emerge. This is not an argument for stripping projects back to the bare minimum or ignoring complexity. But time costs money and when time is wasted away, the cost is borne by everyone in ways that rarely make the balance sheet.

We could talk about aborted projects: entire professional teams spending years on major regeneration schemes, securing consents, even beginning construction, only for projects to be abandoned when political priorities shift or funding models change. When this happens, it is not just buildings that are lost but human effort, community trust, expertise and significant public and private capital. Fast forward a few years for a brand-new team to be appointed, repeating much of the same work. How is this sustainable?

Especially in residential developments, the consequences are immediate and damaging with inefficiency directly translating into fewer homes being delivered and longer waiting lists – outcomes we cannot afford during a housing crisis. And waste is never abstract: abandoned schemes, repeated redesigns and extended programmes all incur costs, making viability harder, and in housing, those costs ultimately fall to residents through higher rents, higher purchase prices and higher service charges.

Then there is the waste embedded in competitive bidding. Large tenders often demand extraordinary levels of work from entire teams. Years ago, I was part of a professional team bidding on LLDC sites. The developer spent a million pounds and 12 months on the bid and came second. The third bidder spent the same. There is no prize for second or third place, and none of that work translated into anything useful. Multiply this across the industry and the scale of wasted effort becomes staggering.

Competition has value, it can drive innovation, quality and price certainty, but the current models often work against us.

Procurement practices compound the problem. Clunky processes, cancelled frameworks, scrapped schemes and aborted tenders create inefficiency. Even when projects proceed, the over-use of competitive tendering can add unnecessary cost (there is only one winner and many losers), can encourage defensive behaviour and undermine collaboration. This is waste every bit as real as what ends up in skips.

If we’re serious about reducing waste in construction, we need to widen the conversation. Material efficiency matters, but our processes must change too. Better procurement, more realistic bidding, longer‑term partnerships and greater political and financial certainty won’t eliminate risk, but they would significantly cut the inefficiencies we currently accept as normal.

And broadening the conversation means broadening who is involved: a sector‑wide response, with professional organisations working together to create unified pressure across the industry and government to tackle systemic inefficiency.

The biggest waste in our industry is the time, money, talent, good work and resources lost through avoidable inefficiency and repetition. Until we address this, we will continue to talk about waste while quietly generating more of it than we can afford.