Environmental Impact

Protecting the environment is important. That’s why reducing the environmental impact caused by construction is a key objective for us.

At SFS, we want to secure the buildings that we live, work and play in, and crucially, secure the future of our world. One of the ways we approach this is by looking at how we can minimise the environmental impact of the projects we work on, and our own carbon footprint. This involves constant refinement of our manufacturing processes, to analysing how we can help improve decisions in the build process, and creating ways in which whole lifecycle costs can be reduced.

Thermal Performance

A key factor to reducing environmental impact is how we make better use the world’s resources. With buildings, this means we need to look at how we can reduce energy consumption from heat loss, which is one of the biggest impacts on in-use carbon within the built environment.

With our specialist companies in the building envelope, SFS UK comes together to ensure that building envelopes can minimise heat escape – from using the right fasteners and fixings, through to maximising the performance of insulating materials by reducing cold-bridging.

SFS Heritage and Quality

To continue aiding decisions in the build process, SFS has a number of digital tools that aid building design, and we continually add valuable data and learnings to these tools to improve.

With our heritage in manufacturing fasteners and fixings, along with our ISO-approved test facilities, we are continuing to invest and design innovative products that lead to better thermal performance.

Whole Lifecycle Costs

Environmental impact isn’t just reduced from buildings that are currently in-use. We anticipate that 80% of the building stock in-use in 2050 will be built now.

This means that along with being thermally efficient, buildings and the products within them need to be long-lasting. Servicing and maintenance needs to come down too, as every unnecessary action leads to higher carbon emissions.

BIM and Digital Construction

To help achieve this, we harness data and use BIM (building information modelling) and digital twin augmented reality technologies. These tools allow us to inform decision makers of how long components are expected to last, and when maintenance is required to maintain the building performance.

With BIM design data, we can reliably show products that can be re-used in new buildings once buildings have reached the end of their service life. SFS is also an adopter of EPDs (Environmental Product Declarations), for full clarity and transparency on our carbon footprint.

To see more about how we use digital in construction, see our digital construction page