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S2E7 - Beca's Circular Design Framework w/ Tania Hyde
24 Plays10 days ago
Host Seth Scott interviews Tania Hyde, Technical Director & Circular Design Lead (Transport & Infrastructure) at Beca. One of our most detailed episodes yet, Tania talks about Beca's Circular Design Framework, how infrastructure projects can achieve circular principles by asking tough questions, accounting for the Planet Price in purchasing, and free Circular Spatial Planning from TU Delft.
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Transcript
Differing Road Construction Impacts
00:00:00
Speaker
we could have two roads that were the same dollar value to build, but it had a very different planetary impact. So one was twice the impact of the other.
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome back to Infrastructure Connections, the podcast where we explore what
Introduction of Tanya Hyde
00:00:17
Speaker
makes sustainable infrastructure work. Brought to you by the Infrastructure Sustainability Council, I'm your host, Seth Scott, and today we're talking to Tanya Hyde.
00:00:26
Speaker
Tanya is a chartered civil engineer, recently appointed fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers in the UK, technical director in the Transport and Infrastructure team, and Becca's Circular Design Lead.
00:00:37
Speaker
With colleagues at BECCA, she developed their circular design framework for project delivery. This work is supported by her recent European training in spatial circularity strategies for sustainable regional development.
00:00:51
Speaker
Well, hi, Tanya. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I have to ask this because I just find it
Career Path from Oil Refinery to Sustainability
00:00:56
Speaker
fascinating. You work in sustainability now, but your first job was actually working at an oil refinery. How did that happen?
00:01:02
Speaker
And what's that journey been like? um So I need to take you back quite a few years. i happened to be 16 years old at the time and I had ah was on the journey of discovery for what I wanted to do as a career. I'd looked into architecture, then realised I needed seven years, needed to be the top of my class, like head of jobs, wasn't that great um and started to have A few conversations around what were my other options.
00:01:33
Speaker
And luckily, um at the time, my best friend's dad was a civil engineer. So I'd been speaking to him about engineering and what that entailed. and I went to my school careers advisor and said, this is what I want to do.
00:01:47
Speaker
Was told that that's actually a man's job and I should think about being a beautician or a hairdresser. My mum was a hairdresser and i a got first-hand experience of what ah that looked like and knew that it wasn't for me.
00:02:01
Speaker
um so ah My determination was to get my friend's to dad to agree to a two-week work experience, unpaid, to show that this is something that I really wanted to do. And he happened to be their chief civil engineer on an oil refinery.
00:02:19
Speaker
And so I was the third female on the site, which was an interesting experience. um It definitely cemented for me that this is what I wanted to do, not necessarily in that field, but I wanted to do engineering work.
00:02:32
Speaker
And it also ah showed my teachers that I was really determined to do engineering and that I should be allowed to follow up with my maths and physics and all those subjects that I needed to get a degree and to work in the field.
00:02:48
Speaker
That's pretty exciting. i could see that being fun. yeah so What drew you to circularity from there?
Interest in Sustainability and Circular Economy
00:02:55
Speaker
um So sustainability was always a bit of an interest, but it felt too big. I didn't know what to do with it.
00:03:03
Speaker
um Apart from, ah but we'll be back in the early 2000s, we were still focused on carbon. There was a little bit of like nature coming in, but nobody seemed to be really focused on it. um And i I just was lost on how do I apply it to the work that I do?
00:03:21
Speaker
It wasn't really part of my degree when I that. i did that And so probably, I'd say 12, but it's probably more like 15 years ago, my best friend started her MBA and ah her main part was on the circular economy. So we started some great discussions around, well, what does that really mean?
00:03:41
Speaker
um And as an engineer, she had lots and lots of theory, but I really started to go, well, as an engineer, what would you like me to do differently? And she her first job was actually working for a council in Australia where they were looking at trialing plastics in roads.
00:03:58
Speaker
And it just didn't fit. And I couldn't work out why articulated at the time. But the more and more that we dug into it, and I was going, well, if you're really talking about circularity, you're taking somebody else's waste, which is fine, but putting it in an asset that then pretty much destines it for landfill, unless it's been designed in a way that you can reuse that road surface two, three, four times over.
00:04:24
Speaker
And so that's where I was really intrigued around that thinking um of not just dumping your waste on somebody else to deal with, but how do you actually use it in a way that you actually get that longevity out of your assets.
00:04:39
Speaker
um um I was really fortunate to go to the Netherlands on a diplomatic visit and spoke to one of their ah infrastructure engineers about this very issue. And her version was, um you're using your precious road asset as an above ground landfill for others. And she said, if you can be sure that you can reuse that material two, three, four, five times over,
00:05:04
Speaker
then that's okay but often when we put plastics in roads it means that it's going to landfill so that's it so one use only and it's definitely something that we should be thinking about what we're putting in our assets that means that their future maintenance reuse and you know what we do with those materials is really important You're right, there's the whole of life cycle that needs to be considered as well.
00:05:31
Speaker
And I guess yeah part of that is about the story that you tell around it. So yeah you'd you'd actually wrote that um roadmaps and storytelling should answer questions like how would a circular region function and what does a desired future look like and how does it enhance livability in our communities?
00:05:48
Speaker
um What does that circularity look like in New Zealand's infrastructure? What's that story? Maybe an example is the best way to do it.
Designing Adaptable Infrastructure
00:05:55
Speaker
um So if you think about a river in Ataroa that swells every a few years with heavy rains, so we've had quite a few around the country, and so each time that heavy storms comes through, a ah bridge that's connecting to communities gets damaged or swept away.
00:06:15
Speaker
And traditionally, all we've done is build back and when we've built back we've tried to build back better and whether that's heavier stronger more expensive um but the river always wins so it always ends up damaging it in some way and it's costing money but what if we could actually design it in a different way and think about things in a different form.
00:06:39
Speaker
So and you know could we build a bridge that's modular, that's lightweight, that can be built from components that we can literally um get warning that there's a an event coming and we can we can pick it up, we can move it and we can put it in a safe place.
00:06:54
Speaker
We can let the storm pass and then you can put the bridge back immediately. So that connection for that community is there straight away. They haven't got to wait for a rebuild to be done, months of you know isolation.
00:07:07
Speaker
And so actually working out either how to work with the hour or whether we can work with and the materials and how we and use them. and Some of that thinking was around when I worked on the canals in the UK, we used to have swing bridges.
00:07:22
Speaker
So you would go along on your narrowboat, you'd come to a bridge, a road bridge, and you could literally get out and swing it out the way you would work go through and then you would push it back.
00:07:33
Speaker
and these are heavy bit assets but they were built in a way that you could physically just push it yourself obviously maybe on a higher bigger scale um but you give the community that still that connection there's that safety but we're not spending huge amounts of dollars every single year or every and so many years on um building back after storms so that's where how do you not fight against nature how do you work with it.
00:08:00
Speaker
And actually in the Netherlands, you can have ah bridges as a service. So they have like an eBay for bridges so you can pick what you want, you can bring it into place and then you take it away again. So it can be done.
00:08:11
Speaker
I know we have like you more challenges here because, you know, the ground moves. um But I'm sure as engineers, we're problem solvers. so you know Do you see any of that taking place in New Zealand now?
00:08:24
Speaker
um We have Waukakote NZTA, they do have Bailey Bridges, so they do hire Bailey Bridges for a short period of time. um I think we could do more in that space, but we're not set up as a ah market or industry really to leverage that.
00:08:43
Speaker
I think that's definitely a challenge that we see here. I guess that brings us to circular spatial planning. um And reconfirm, you mentioned that um You mentioned that circular spatial planning is a way to shift our urban infrastructure and spaces between the connection of cities and countryside to support those closed loop value chains.
00:09:06
Speaker
um Bridges are a good example of connections. How does that circular spatial planning fit into this? um I think that's part of our, um a lot of our cities have grown spread.
00:09:20
Speaker
And so that whole
Holistic Approach to City Planning
00:09:22
Speaker
system thinking, system design um doesn't necessarily happen. And a lot of our projects are done, won't say piecemeal, but that it's not looked at the wider whole often that when we get a project, you get a specific area that you're looking at.
00:09:39
Speaker
And we're not necessarily connecting that to how we've got to be adaptable, how are we recovering or how are we regenerating our natural systems. So um spatial circularity for me is about how we're shifting from doing piecemeal projects to looking at um areas as a whole, so looking at a full system.
00:09:58
Speaker
ah And our systems aren't static, they do move the spaces we use, how we use them, change and making sure we have that connection to our urban and our rural areas.
00:10:11
Speaker
And so when you're you're thinking about how things are put together, having that circularity piece in the middle is really important. I would love to see zero waste precinct. So how do you design out waste from that precinct?
00:10:25
Speaker
So how do you get the cafes to use their coffee grinds in compost for a rooftop garden that's supplying a local restaurant? um How are you looking at um yeah using the heating or the energy ah that's coming from the different operations that they can use each other? So it could be excess heat that goes to a greenhouse that's growing their food.
00:10:51
Speaker
So how how do we work out that system within an area? um But we don't. It's a building there. It's a restaurant there. It's ah you know the and much more isolated.
00:11:04
Speaker
So I think there's lots of benefits to turn the dial if we work together. So that that's the sort of thing that I would like to see and that
Introducing the 'Planet Price' Platform
00:11:14
Speaker
that change in how we plan and pull these big infrastructure projects together or the built form.
00:11:23
Speaker
I guess that systems thinking is required, but it often bumps up against things like ah perceived budgets and the economy. In fact, you once said that the economy is pitted against physics, which isn't really fair because physics always wins. Yeah.
00:11:40
Speaker
um One of the discussions we've been having in the industry lately is how infrastructure needs to price in that dollar value of these circularity and sustainability initiatives.
00:11:52
Speaker
yeah So how do you see that dollar value impacted by these kinds of spatial planning? um I have been very lucky to play with a platform called Planet Price um in the early days. they're um ah You can use them now, but what i really liked with what they were doing, they were putting the full planetary boundaries impacts of and a product, an asset on the table for discussion.
00:12:24
Speaker
So, um, We had a ah play, and and when I say play, it's because we were working out how the software talks to each other, but we put in a road and a bridge and got them to run the app, the device behind, and it actually popped out that we could have two roads that were the same dollar value to build,
00:12:49
Speaker
but it had a very different planetary impact. So one was twice the impact of the other. And when it looked at, so we weren't and looking at just carbon, we were looking at the water, we were looking at the land use.
00:13:02
Speaker
So when you're looking at the planetary boundaries, you have a full conversation and a full impact of the decisions that you're making. And I really liked that that holistic view that it wasn't just the, you know, however many million dollars we're spending to build um an asset. We actually got to see there the impact on the planet that we're having that we don't articulate. That's fantastic. What's that called?
00:13:28
Speaker
Planet Price, I've worked with them on infrastructure. So we like i say, we were playing with it the 3D models and how you take that information and data and plug it into their AI platform to give you have some amazing visuals. Then you can drill down and go, well, where's all my heavy concrete, you know carbon, which is often concrete, but it will give you like the hotspot so you can see where and you need to spend most of the effort.
00:13:56
Speaker
um It's more on what clients are willing to have a holistic view of what they're doing and how they're doing it to have a different conversation. I'm definitely checking that out. That's pretty cool.
00:14:11
Speaker
Yep. Well, so you've been working on Becca's circular design framework.
Circular Design Framework Development
00:14:16
Speaker
Tell us about that. How did it develop and how is it evolving? Yeah. So the friend that I talked about who had done the MBA, Debbie, um she um and I were having the conversation around and circularity.
00:14:31
Speaker
And then we used to have quite few Friday evening ah glasses of wine to put the world to rights. And then what I was starting to do is go, well, what are the different questions that you're wanting me as an engineer to do? Because I already have you know consenting that I need to think about.
00:14:49
Speaker
um I've got these things called broader outcomes that the client wants to and include. I've got this thing called climate change. how how do i start where do i start so that's where we started on an approach around well you need different questions and deb always said you know the um linear economies had 200 years of asking their questions we now need a different set if we want to change the system um so that's where we started ah playing with the different set of questions and we had the
00:15:21
Speaker
three circular economy questions, but I said, you know, we can't decouple that from our communities. So how do we get community benefits from whatever it is that we're creating? We need to include climate resilience and adaptation. So what does that look like?
00:15:39
Speaker
And obviously for where we are in Aotearoa, we need that and cultural perspective. Have you started to use it on projects? Yep, ah we've used it um on a lot of projects and quite different ones.
00:15:51
Speaker
So um we've used them on like big roading infrastructure projects. We've used them in the Pacific for master planning. We've used them at a port in Australia. And some of them are really simple questions, especially for engineers who are problem solvers.
00:16:07
Speaker
You ask around the designing out waste and pollution is going, actually, do you understand what your waste streams are? First off, can you actually list them all out? Okay, so now you have to keep that material. You can't send it to landfill. So what are you going to do with it?
00:16:20
Speaker
And actually the new design that you're just creating, what's going to be the waste streams from that new design? And how are you going to make sure that none of that goes to landfill? i'm So you you start to get a different questions.
00:16:34
Speaker
um I have to say the best one though, and I had a great session with our pavement engineers who are very ah defined it in what they do. and um they i said right okay we can we have a hundred year pavement and they're like no no no no our standards say that it's only 25 years i'm going yeah yeah but can you humor me and like design a hundred year pavement um so we got this design all done and i was like cool great um by the way it's by the coast and sea level rise is happening so it's going to have like wet feet for probably 60 80 percent to eighty percent of the time would you change the design
00:17:11
Speaker
Well, if you told us that at the start, we would have done deza and we went through. And so we were trying all these different scenarios and asking different questions to come up with a design then that you go 80% of our roads in our area are going to have this challenge.
00:17:25
Speaker
And you've just said that we should be doing this design, not that one that we do for all of them. He goes, yeah, but that's what our standards saying, what our clients are asking for. you're like, hmm, okay. So that's a different conversation to have.
00:17:38
Speaker
Yeah, we see this happening over and over again. It seems to be a recurring theme in circularity and sustainability is that asking those questions gets you answers that are completely different than the standard. and And yeah we're also seeing that data is a big part of it.
00:17:53
Speaker
Like you said, asking about the waste stream, just asking the question, what what is the data you're collecting and usually finding out that it's not being collected And then it paints a very different picture when it is being
Data's Role in Circular Economy
00:18:05
Speaker
collected.
00:18:05
Speaker
So what do you think, um those are good examples, but what what do you think we need more of when it comes to data collection? um It's a really good question because what I saw in Europe is around um data digital technologies way to actually accelerate change.
00:18:23
Speaker
So if you don't understand the information that you have, it's really hard for you to then look at where and how you change the system. So a circular economy is around system change.
00:18:34
Speaker
So how do you know what those acupuncture points are that will really get you a lot further along the the journey if you haven't got that data in the first place? So we do see like probably not so much um here, but in other places around material flows, um you you do get the traditional waste recycling. So we know how many tons go to you know landfill.
00:18:57
Speaker
We're starting to pick up um how much is recycled, but it's quite a course level of information. We do have ah data around our carbon and emissions, what we're and designing with projects.
00:19:10
Speaker
um And with we do see information more in places like Europe around and different products as a service. But what we need is that change of not just what construction waste is going to landfill,
00:19:24
Speaker
But what's the condition of the construction waste coming off and what's the potential for recovery? How can we then be able to start using that to design it in? um If you think about our buildings, that normally there's a whole heap of data there.
00:19:40
Speaker
But what I saw in Europe is like QR codes or tags that ingrained and you can scan. This is what it's made of. This is what's been done to it. And this is where it is now. So you're starting to get those material passports.
00:19:52
Speaker
I think a bonus for us is we have a really good asset management database to start off with. What we need to do is put that supercharger to give you much more information on the materials and what we're doing to them to be able to understand what we can do to them in the future.
00:20:14
Speaker
This is some of the most specific information that we've heard so far and especially specific to infrastructure. So I really appreciate it Should I ask a civil engineer in the first place, I guess? ah Well, funny enough, when I was in Europe, i got called a unicorn. And though first off, I wasn't quite sure how to take that. um But understanding engineering and what and how an engineer thinks and sees to then understand um the circularity side of things really, really helps.
00:20:43
Speaker
And the other thing is I'm actually dyslexic, which At the start of my career, I'm trying to learn with a real challenge because what I realized is I think differently to um a lot of others.
00:20:55
Speaker
So I often get pulled in the room because I think differently. But that really helps me see the systems and how you connect the dots. What do you do How do you bring things together? So that really helps when you want to get in the detail, want to do things differently. And I have an engineer who says, no, no, we can't do that.
00:21:14
Speaker
I know they can do that. So I can call BS when they, you know, when they're doing that and go, no, no, no, I know you can. And we've had that instance where, you know, we've had pushback for whatever reason.
00:21:25
Speaker
And then I've gone in and explained and looked at what we're doing. They're like, oh yeah, but that's easy. right Can you do that for me pretty please? Oh, wow. I feel seen. So you were recently at the Regen Expo Australia in ah Sydney, and you were talking about indigenous knowledge, the basis of circularity. You were on a panel there. If we think most of our things that we do is on a short-term basis, so whether it's funding cycles, whether it's our design lives, the decisions that we make are very ah short when you come to um circularity, and we actually need to change that from a 100, 200, 500-year thinking.
00:22:05
Speaker
And so that's how we need to build things up. What I love is in Wales, they have a future generations commissioner. So how about we have on any of our big projects that we know that's going to have a massive impact, that we actually have a future generations commissioner or board or whoever a person who that project doesn't get to go past the start unless they understand and see not only what it's delivering today, but for those future generations, because that will bring a very different ah conversation to the table.
00:22:43
Speaker
So there really is a ministry for the future. Yes. that's Yeah. There are a lot of people who know how things work now and a lot of people who dream up ways that they could work in the future, but seldom do we talk about what it takes to actually transition from one to the other.
00:23:01
Speaker
How did you learn about transition awareness and how do you use that? Part of the course that I did around spatial planning actually looks at transition planning um and there's some really good tools and frameworks um in there. So you can, um it's basically around how do you break down the parts to then be able to see what are the acupuncture pieces that need to change to then go, well, how do you change them? But you need those people in the room to have the conversation too.
00:23:31
Speaker
So if you are going to change a standard, change a policy or something that you you need everybody to agree, that's what you're going to do. And we just need to take steps in the right direction. We can do big, bold, brave and give it a go, or we can do smaller pieces.
00:23:49
Speaker
But them what... um Debbie and I had been talking around was actually having living labs and Europe have, I think there's about 20, that are focused on particular topics or areas. So there's a lot around food.
00:24:03
Speaker
I know they had one around cement. They even had one on um mattresses because recognized how many mattresses per day were going to landfill. And you go, how do we stop that? So that there is a system and a process that you can bring everybody together to unpick these massive wicked problems that we have and work out how to come up with some actions to make change.
00:24:28
Speaker
But none of them are easy and people need to be ready for change. So i I kind of glossed over it a bit, but you had taken a circular spatial planning course at the Delft University of
Course Recommendation on Circularity
00:24:39
Speaker
Technology.
00:24:39
Speaker
Is that something that you would recommend to others? And what did you get out of that? ah people with good intentions ah ah start to get involved in the circular economy without actually understanding necessarily the nuances with it.
00:24:53
Speaker
And so you end up with a whole heap of recycling, ah energy recovery and material recovery and talking about how you change materials. That is not the circular economy. That is the linear economy.
00:25:05
Speaker
And that is waste management. I'm not saying we don't need it. We definitely do need it. but it's a different conversation to the circular conversation that we're having. And so during the base course, which is free and it's online, ah um it helps you understand that actually when I challenge that recycling is not circular, I can actually go, well, how are you designing out the waste if all you're doing is treating the symptom?
00:25:33
Speaker
How are you looking after that material at its highest value when you've just crushed it? How are you regenerating natural systems out of recycling a product that uses more water that is taking up space for wherever it is and probably putting contaminants back in the system?
00:25:50
Speaker
I'm going to have to take this course. This sounds great. It's really good. Yeah.
00:25:56
Speaker
What are um one of the other resources or another path that's important for our listeners to follow to access circularity? What's one thing they could do today as a takeaway from this? Definitely the TU Delft course um and there's quite and there there are a few different ones but like say it's all free they're only a couple of hours so they're not big ah commitments.
00:26:19
Speaker
and The other one is we've um we gifted Engineering New Zealand our circular design framework um a year or so ago. In next month um they're looking at releasing that as a free course to all their members so that's 22,000 members will get access to um thinking differently in how they apply circular economy, climate action to projects.
00:26:46
Speaker
I would say the other ones at Ace Hub in Australia has worked um some content. I know the New South Wales Circular and Circular Economy Victoria also have um support.
00:26:58
Speaker
so but There's definitely information out there um that I would say have a look at those. And obviously the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has a whole heap of content.
00:27:10
Speaker
um i did do it If you want to do a paid course, I did do and the Circular Economy Alliance um course. So there's like three different levels, but that is a more of a paid um certification rather than a a free course.
00:27:24
Speaker
That's great. Well, this has been really fascinating and very practically informative, and I really appreciate that. Not a problem. Thank you for having me. youda Thank you so much for being on the show.
00:27:36
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Infrastructure Connections. Please follow us wherever you get your podcasts and we want to hear your feedback. Please leave a message down below telling us what this episode made you think of or drop us a line at Infrastructure Sustainability Council.
00:27:51
Speaker
Stay tuned for the next episode of Infrastructure Connections.