The life spans of buildings are long and it may take a number of years for performance issues to come to light, by which time the original designers have long moved on and the opportunity to learn from experience is lost. Further, the competitive and adversarial nature of UK construction inhibits the dissemination of building performance information. Thus, the construction industry in 2010 is generally still delivering buildings that are little better in real performance terms than they were in the 1990s. The UK goal now is to achieve 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. Yet buildings presently account for some 45% of carbon emissions.
