How Sir Robert McAlpine Is Redefining Responsible Building

"Five years ago, we set a clear ambition for the future of sustainability at SRM – and then we set about to deliver it, embedding sustainability into how we design, procure and deliver,” says Simon Richards, Sir Robert McAlpine’s Sustainability Director.

“Critically, we built in the agility to refine, act and keep pace as the science, our clients and the world around us evolved.”

A measurable drop in carbon emissions 

Construction is responsible for nearly 40% of global carbon emissions, and SRM's strategy treated that figure as a starting point rather than a footnote. 

The company established a full Scope 1, 2 and 3 carbon baseline in its first year, before securing validation from the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) in August 2023, becoming one of the first major UK construction companies to do so. 

By the end of 2025, SRM had reduced Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 71%, driven by a switch to Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) instead of diesel, 92% renewable electricity, and a 34% cut in overall energy consumption. 

Scope 3 emissions, which account for 88% of the company's total footprint and are generated largely through materials and the supply chain, fell by 32% over the same period. 

SRM also became the first Tier 1 contractor to have its entire business certified to PAS 2080, the international standard for carbon management in construction, and joined ConcreteZero and SteelZero to help decarbonise its two most carbon-intensive material categories. 

"The leadership we've shown in embedding carbon reduction across our business, it’s a genuine technical capability. Reducing emissions for our client and ourselves, and moving the whole industry forwards,” says Simon Leek, Sir Robert McAlpine’s Company Carbon Manager. 

Five figures capture the scale of the company’s five-year shift: 

● 33% reduction in Scope 1, 2 and 3 carbon emissions against SRM's 2020 baseline ● 98% of construction waste diverted from landfill by 2025 

● 96% of key materials responsibly sourced across the business 

● £153m (US$207m) total social return on investment delivered since 2020

● 2,309 full-time jobs and 447 FTE apprenticeships created over the same period

Social value built into every project 

SRM's strategy treated social value as a defined business deliverable rather than a discretionary add-on, requiring every project to plan for, pursue and report on its community impact. 

The company now conducts a Community Needs Assessment on every project, drawing on local demographic data and deprivation indices to target support at genuine need rather than generic activity. 

That approach delivered a verified social impact of more than £1.19bn (US$1.61bn) in 2025 alone, alongside £1.38m (US$1.86m) in charitable donations and 6,110 hours of employee volunteering across the five-year period. 

Other headline figures include 55,200 participants in education support activities, 10,067 participants in employment and skills training, and 854 work experience placements. 

SRM also helped scale ActionFunder, a grassroots community giving platform, through which it has funded 196 projects supporting more than 133,000 people. 

"We've gone from reacting to social value requirements to genuinely leading on them. The impact we've created in communities across the UK is something I'm incredibly proud of. But what really excites me most is that it's now built into our project delivery,” says Anjana Raj, SRM's Company Social Value Manager. 

Cutting waste through smarter data 

Resource efficiency and data maturity emerged as closely linked strands of SRM's strategy. 

The construction industry produces 62% of the UK's total waste, and SRM's diversion from landfill rate rose from around 80% in 2009 to a consistent 98% across the final years of this strategy, with absolute waste tonnage falling to its lowest level in over a decade by 2025. 

Much of that progress came from replacing manual, retrospective reporting with real-time tools, supported by more than 40 supply chain framework agreements requiring materials certified to BES 6001 or ISO 14001. 

The following approaches featured across SRM's projects:

● Qflow, an AI-powered platform deployed at The Forge to automate waste data capture at the site gate 

● Materials passports, first used at scale in the UK at 1 Broadgate with British Land, reclaiming 27% of materials during demolition 

● Power BI reporting, combined with Tracker+ and Thrive data, to generate deeper project-level insight 

● Building information modelling (BIM), used to identify and design out waste before materials reach site 

"That our collective approach during this period has shifted from a focus on legal compliance and diversion from landfill to identifying and realising opportunities to design out waste,” says Darron Hall, SRM's Head of Sustainability.

"The journey we've taken. From spreadsheets and emails to data infrastructure that people across the business use and trust. Five years ago we were capturing data. Now we're using it to inform decisions and drive improvement. That transformation has made everything else possible,” adds Adam Robinson, SRM's Senior Sustainability Manager.

Building on this five-year foundation, SRM has launched a successor strategy, Sustainable Engineering Excellence, built around three themes: Carbon, Circularity and Social Impact. The company has framed the shift with a simple tagline, "Making Choices That Matter," a signal that the systems and data infrastructure built since 2020 are now expected to shape decisions earlier in every project's lifecycle, rather than simply report on them after the fact. 

SRM business partners: 

British Land is a UK-listed real estate investment trust specialising in commercial and mixed-use property. Alongside SRM, it co-developed the UK's first large-scale materials passport at 1 Broadgate, tracking every material used in the building to support future reuse, and jointly ran the Broadgate Future Talent Programme with the Construction Youth Trust to bring young Londoners into construction apprenticeships. 

ActionFunder is a grassroots community giving platform that connects businesses with local charities and community projects. SRM invested in and helped scale the platform, using it to distribute site-based Strong Foundations Grants. Across the report period, ActionFunder has funded 196 projects, supporting more than 133,000 people and channelling over £470,000 (US$635,000) in direct grants. 

Crisis is a UK homelessness charity. Working with SRM and the Skills Centre, it delivered the Crisis Employment Programme at the 21 Moorfields project, combining skills training, work experience and housing support. Of five participants who completed the programme, three secured permanent employment and stable housing.

Achilles is a supply chain risk and compliance specialist. SRM works with Achilles to carry out ethical labour audits and site engagement surveys across its supply chain, supporting the company's commitment to tackling modern slavery and forced labour risk in construction. 

Buro Happold is an international engineering consultancy. As a fellow ConcreteZero member, it worked with SRM on the Temple Quarter Academic Building in Bristol to specify lower-carbon concrete containing up to 85% GGBS, contributing to a 25.7% embodied carbon reduction from concrete alone on the project.