Development History
CEEQUAL was originally developed by a team led by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), with financial support from the UK Government and from the ICE's Research & Development Enabling Fund.
That original development of CEEQUAL was managed by Crane Environmental Ltd, with active support and participation from relevant government departments and agencies, leading civil engineering consultants and contractors as well as professional and industry associations such as CIRIA, the Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE) and the Civil Engineering Contractors Association (CECA).
Following extensive industry-wide consultation and trialling, the Scheme was launched in September 2003 and the first eight Awards presented at the ICE. The Scheme went public in June 2004 with the publication of Version 3 of the Assessment Manual for Projects.
Since then, CEEQUAL has become the accepted UK industry scheme for assessing environmental and sustainability performance in civil engineering and public realm projects, being now widely used by major civil engineering clients, designers and contractors, and continuing development of the methodology has been an integral part of Scheme management since 2004. The launch in 2011 of not only CEEQUAL for International Projects but also CEEQUAL for Term Contracts made the CEEQUAL Methodology available for all civil engineering, infrastructure, landscaping and public realm works.
Building on nearly ten years’ experience in operating and developing the tool, CEEQUAL launched its newly upgraded and extended Version 5 to the world in Summer 2012. Version 5 completes CEEQUAL’s transition from environmental assessment and awards to a sustainability assessment and awards scheme. The Assessment Manuals were reviewed, revised and updated by CEEQUAL’s panel of experts to reflect current industry best practice. The previous twelve sections were reduced and refined to nine sections, and a completely new section on project strategy was added. Other types of projects, such as marine and offshore, are now able to use CEEQUAL Version 5 for Assessments more easily.
The new ‘Project Strategy’ section was developed for the CEEQUAL Assessment in order to challenge project teams on whether a project is contributing (or will contribute) to moving society on a pathway towards more-sustainable living. Project teams are now encouraged to adopt wider aspects of sustainability and are being assessed on implementation of the core principles of sustainability in their design and construction.