Close
UCL a finalist in the 2015 Green Gown Awards
10 July 2015
Now in their eleventh year, the Green Gown Awards recognise exceptional sustainability initiatives being undertaken by universities and colleges across the UK. And UCL is a finalist in these awards for its pioneering approach to reducing vehicles on its Bloomsbury campus.
In 2012, UCL recognised that with a £1.2bn, 10 year construction programme about to start, it had to take a new approach in managing deliveries on its heavily constrained Bloomsbury campus. With over 200 vehicles already entering the campus every week and over 50,000 pedestrian movements through its gates per day, the additional vehicles for this programme were predicted to bring the campus to a halt and severely impact the university’s operations.
In partnership with Wilson James, UCL developed a new approach through the use of an off-campus centre to schedule, consolidate and minimise deliveries onto the campus, enhance the safety of pedestrians, and improve delivery efficiency.
This project represents the important part logistics can play in realising dramatic improvements to safety, sustainability and efficiency, not just on construction projects but across the whole of UCL’s campus
Beverley Cook, Logistics Services Delivery Manager
The use of an off-campus consolidation centre reduces the number of deliveries to the Bloomsbury campus, as well as reducing vehicle mileage and emissions through consolidation and bulk buying. Previously UCL received between 1,500 and 2,000 deliveries each month. The introduction of this new approach immediately reduced this by over 500 deliveries, as non-essential trips to campus were avoided. At the peak of construction activity it’s expected that a 50-60% reduction in vehicles deliveries will be achieved through consolidation.
The Green Gown Award winners will be announced on 26th November 2015. A full list of the Green Gown Awards Finalists can be found here.
Find out more about UCL’s work on construction logistics by contacting the Sustainability Team.