Chief Executive’s Blog: EcoBuild Impressions

After the past year, you’d expect construction trade shows to be on their knees.  EcoBuild, however, seems to defy the recession entirely, as the 2010 show was yet again bigger and busier than its predecessor. In keeping with the trend, the Wood Window Alliance stand was also bigger and busier than before.  The stand featured five Alliance manufacturers’ windows as well as a display model from Ventrolla to demonstrate their system for maintaining sliding sash windows. A new set of ‘mythbuster’ display panels, sponsored by five of the supplier members, which demolished some of the popular misconceptions about wood windows, provided the backdrop and pressed home the Alliance’s confident and assertive message. Talking to people around the show, the stand had made an impact.  It certainly drew the punters in – there were a couple of occasions when I couldn’t get back on for people around the front.  The sponsors’ teams who manned the stand developed a fantastic co-operative spirit, supporting each other and getting the campaign’s message across.  Altogether, they scanned over 250 potential leads over the three days, which they’ll now share. The Alliance used EcoBuild as the platform to launch the results of the detailed research it commissioned from Imperial College London and Davis Langdon on wood windows’ service life, whole life costing and the comparative environmental impact of wood and PVC-U windows.  You can read the press release here and the summary of the reports here.  All the windows on the stand displayed a sticker proclaiming ‘Minimum 60 years service life’. I hear it’s already caused considerable discussion amongst the plastic window industry as to how we can stand that claim up.  As I’ve said in my previous blogpost, with a 60 year service life, the windows will last the design life of the building.  That transforms the whole life cost equation because it removes the replacement cost.  That means that Wood Window Alliance manufacturers are going into any tender process where whole life cost is an important consideration with a significant advantage. It was good to see such a strong showing from across the wood industries at the show.  There was also the first signs of the relaunched Wood for Good campaign. One thing that does come over from walking round the exhibition hall is how far every construction product has gone to develop a marketing strategy around its sustainability credentials.  You may think that some of these are far-fetched, but if that’s what the market demands, you shouldn’t be surprised at the effort and ingenuity devoted to it by those whose claims are less than obvious.  I’d argue that the wood-using industries have had a tendency to be complacent and assume that the wider construction industry will simply accept wood as the more sustainable materials.  Consequently, we’ve been the hare in this race, having the natural speed, but not bothering to do the hard work in getting the scientific data to back up our claims, which has allowed the tortoises to overtake us.  The WWA research shows that investing in the science isn’t about counting angels.  It’s a recognition of the realities of competition in the 21st century construction products market to give a solid, hard-edged competitive benefit.