Jul 5 2019
Minster, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, won Circular Economy Project of the Year for its work to reduce waste and for its commitment to recycling.
Bruce Spencer-Knott winning IoD Director of the Year Award
The BusinessGreen Leaders Awards are one of the most prestigious green awards in the country and are organised by the UK’s leading website for green business news and analysis, BusinessGreen.
Minster is a civil engineering firm which works on major developments across the country as well as working on roads across Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire. The company also works on construction and maintenance projects for the Ministry of Defence and the RAF.
More than 350 businesses entered the awards, with judges including senior figures from business, politics and environmental organisations.
Speaking about Minster, the panel of judges said:
“The judges were hugely impressed by Minster Surfacing's commitment to slashing environmental impacts and its pioneering techniques for recycling old roads to create new ones, which have been credited with slashing waste levels, boosting recycled content, and cutting emissions by almost a third.”
The award comes a week after the company's managing director, Bruce Spencer-Knott was named Director of the Year for Innovation by the Institute of Directors East Midlands.
The Circular Economy Project of the Year category at the BusinessGreen Leaders Awards recognises innovative work that eliminates waste and uses recycling to deliver financial and competitive benefits to an organisation or community.
Minster’s internal project, named ‘smarter, cleaner, greener road surfacing’, saw the firm combining a wide range of technologies, tools and techniques to reduce waste, improve safety, minimise disruption and improve quality at all stages of the construction process.
This includes the use of vehicle-mounted 3D laser scanning technology to measure roads with pinpoint accuracy. This is used to create computer aided designs and measurements, providing detailed instructions for construction teams and automated machinery, enabling material to be used more efficiently and to high level quality.
In addition to this, temperature monitoring systems and GPS tracking is fitted to machinery so that the quality of the material is recorded and measured as it gets used for quality assurance and quality control which also reduces waste.
Also, around 50% of the material used on roads was recycled either on-site or using material removed from other old roads, with the majority of ‘new’ material being produced using secondary aggregates. The company also used removed road material to create 100% recycled farm tracks and industrial yards.
Overall, Minster’s use of technology to improve the way it works has helped it to dramatically cut the carbon footprint of its work and it has prevented tens of thousands of tonnes of material from going to waste. It has also reduced the need for mineral aggregate and oil (the main ingredients of asphalt) from needing to be extracted, refined, processed and transported.
Speaking about the award, Minster’s Managing Director, Bruce Spencer-Knott said:
“Being recognised on a national level for our work to eliminate waste, cut emissions and reduce our reliance on quarrying is absolutely fantastic. Road surfacing and civil engineering have been slow to adapt to greener ways of working, but we’re leading the way and proving that the industry can be safer, cleaner and greener.
“I’m very proud of our team and the way they’ve embraced new ways of working. We’re modernising an industry, we’re making the roads better, we’re helping the environment and we’re putting Lincoln on the map.
“We were up against some really impressive companies at the BusinessGreen Leaders Awards and it was inspiring to see so many green innovations across a wide range of sectors. To have our company among the winners is a major achievement and I couldn’t be more proud.”
This is the latest in a series of award victories for Minster Surfacing and its founder, who was named Director of the Year for Innovation by the Institute of Directors in the East Midlands in June.
The East Midlands IoD Director of the Year Awards is a celebration of leadership talent, success and achievement across Greater Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. The event aims to raise awareness of the significant contribution business leaders can make to society and to economic prosperity. After winning the award at the regional level, Bruce will now go through to the national finals on 18th October, which could lead to a second national award in Minster’s growing trophy cabinet.
Last year, the company won Best Business and Overall Winner at the Lincolnshire Environmental Awards and won the award for Innovation in Construction at the Lincolnshire Technology & Innovation Awards.
The next year could bring about even more green accolades for Minster as the company is currently developing a new system which it hopes will enable it to produce roads that are made from 90% recycled material. Working alongside Lincolnshire County Council’s in-house materials laboratory, the company aims to have the new system in-use by the end of 2019.