Avoiding hidden risks when planning sustainable construction projects

Sustainable building techniques are becoming increasingly popular for construction companies and property owners alike. Our clients are exploring many sustainability options—ranging from the solar panel installations to designing fully carbon-neutral buildings from the ground up.

As part of our commitment to protecting clients and ensuring their businesses are resilient against emerging risks, FM works tirelessly to test these new construction materials, techniques, and products at our 1,600-acre research campus.

To help you do the same, this article highlights some of our most recent (and surprising) findings about common sustainability solutions they may be considering. It also outlines how you can leverage our expertise to ensure their sustainability projects are resilient by design.

Ensuring sustainability projects are resilient

FM conducts thousands of controlled tests every year to understand the risks associated with different construction materials and assess their implications for the resilience of our clients’ businesses.

Through this process, we have found several areas where emerging construction trends may expose your clients to new risks. These include:

• Building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV): Solar photovoltaic materials that are integrated into building components, such as roofs or facades, to generate electricity.
• On-site battery storage: Batteries required for the storage of electricity generated on site.
• General construction materials: New building materials being deployed for a variety of purposes, including cladding, insulation, and façade construction.

While many of the products in these categories are safe and resilient against risks such as fire, others are not. In fact, some contain high concentrations of plastic or other materials that cause them to burn in potentially catastrophic ways.

That’s why it’s so important for your clients to reach out to our team when they are planning any construction project. We can help to ensure that they use FM Approved materials and avoid anything that’s a known risk.

When to talk to our resilience experts

In addition to our own independent testing, FM sometimes schedules targeted tests to give our clients peace of mind about their construction plans.

For example, one client recently contacted us about a BIPV product they had purchased a large volume of to attach to the outside of a warehouse.

Since we had never encountered it before, we scheduled a test to measure its flammability. The controlled burn released 12,000kilowatt of heat—more than 14 times the 830 megawatt “pass mark” for this test.

As a result, we have been able to partner with the client to explore options for mitigating this risk when the solution is deployed.

We apply this partnership-based approach to all our clients. Before any project begins, we can help them to identify natural hazard risks they should be aware of. We can then discuss what construction would be appropriate for risk mitigation and review the project plans to ensure that they are resilient by design.

If you have a client you think could benefit from our expertise in sustainable construction techniques, we’d love to hear from you. Submit a new business enquiry here and we’ll be in touch ASAP.

This is part of a series of articles FM is producing to help brokers understand the value we can provide to their commercial property insurance clients. Look out for the next post in this series for more valuable insights.