Heres an idea

Camden council’s executive recently voted to make sustainable construction part of the council’s policy. As one of the biggest barriers to this is a lack of familiarity with the alternatives to traditional materials, we’ve brought in three types of training.

The first is formal training in construction resources and garden materials – a one-day course run by Construction Resources, a builders merchant.

It covers topics such as water-saving devices and different paint finishes and costs £120 per person.

The second strand is sending people to environment-friendly housing developments such as BedZed and Gallions EcoPark.

These visits take about half a day and aren’t too expensive – it cost less than £25 per person to be shown around BedZed, and we got that from our training budget. In terms of travel, we point them in the direction of the Tube station and give them maps.

Lastly, potential suppliers come to talk to us about their products. Having the physical materials on hand is useful. For example,we use non-slip flooring made of PVC, which is difficult to dispose of. But when suppliers of lino and rubber came in and showed us the materials, there was a great deal of interest and we have piloted one project with lino.

We choose people based on the materials we need at the time, but we don’t push project managers to use a particular supplier.

About 70 people are involved with capital works in Camden and all three types of training are open to all of them.