Now or Never

Our sustainability strategy. And our commitment to the next generation.

In 2024, His Majesty The King recognised Willmott Dixon with a King's Award for Enterprise for Sustainable Development, the highest formal recognition in British business for what a company has achieved in sustainability. It followed the Queen's Award for Enterprise we received for sustainability in earlier years, making us one of only a small number of UK companies to hold both Queen's and King's Awards for our environmental work.

We did not earn either award by talking about what we would do one day. We earned them for what we have already delivered.

Now or Never is what we are doing next.

The case for urgency

Construction is responsible for a substantial share of the UK's carbon emissions — somewhere around 25% when both the running of buildings and the building of them is taken into account. The buildings we deliver in the next decade will determine the emissions footprint of British public services, education, healthcare, leisure and housing for the next half-century.

There is no version of "we'll get to it later" that works. The next generation of buildings has to be the right generation of buildings. Not next decade. Now.

That is the principle behind our sustainability strategy.

What Now or Never commits us to

Now or Never is built around two central commitments — both ambitious by UK construction standards, both publicly stated, and both with the same deadline:

Willmott Dixon will be a net zero carbon company by 2030. This applies to our own operations — our offices, our vehicles, our site cabins, and the energy we use to run our business. We have been a carbon-neutral company since 2012, and Now or Never moves us from neutrality through offsetting to genuine net zero through reduction.

Every building we deliver from 2030 will be net zero carbon in operation. This is the more demanding commitment, because it is not just about us — it is about how we design, procure, build, and hand over every project we take on. Achieving it means re-engineering our delivery, our supply chain, and the design conversations we have with clients from the very first meeting.

Beyond carbon, Now or Never extends our long-standing commitments on materials, biodiversity, social value, supply chain ethics, and the wider environmental and social footprint of every project we deliver.

What we are already delivering

Net zero by 2030 is not a destination. It is a direction we are already moving in, project by project.

  • We are the UK's leading Passivhaus contractor, with [ten] completed and live Passivhaus projects across education, leisure, healthcare, residential and higher education — including the UK's first Passivhaus Plus primary school, the largest non-domestic Passivhaus building completed in the country, and the largest Passivhaus secondary school.
  • Now under construction in South Wales is our most ambitious sustainability project to date: a new primary school and community hub for Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council, designed and built to Passivhaus, BREEAM Outstanding, the WELL Building Standard, Building with Nature, and zero carbon in operation — five environmental standards delivered together, exceeding current Welsh Government targets for embodied carbon in new schools.
  • We are delivering Bridgend College's new town-centre campus — net zero in operation — and the first two schools of Leicestershire County Council's roll-out programme of net zero schools.
  • Through Energy Synergy™, our own post-occupancy monitoring service, we track operational energy use against design targets across our buildings, closing the performance gap that has dogged the construction industry, and giving clients evidence rather than assumption that their buildings perform as specified.

These are not pilot projects or exhibition pieces. They are full-scale, real-world buildings, delivered for real-world public-sector and private-sector clients, on real-world budgets and programmes.

Independently verified

The credibility of any sustainability strategy depends on who is checking the homework. Ours is checked by:

  • The King's Awards for Enterprise: Sustainable Development (2024) and Promoting Opportunity (2023).
  • The Queen's Awards for Enterprise: sustainability, in previous years.
  • The Financial Times Diversity Leaders ranking, where we have been the UK's highest-ranked contractor in 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024: recognising that sustainability is about people as well as planet.
  • The Passivhaus Trust, of which we are a founder member, and the Passivhaus Institute in Germany, which independently certifies every Passivhaus building we deliver.
  • Our published annual sustainability reporting, which sets out our progress in detail and is available for any client, supply chain partner or member of the public to interrogate.

We do not ask anyone to take our sustainability claims on trust. The evidence is on public record.

What this means for our customers

For a growing number of our customers, sustainability is a delivery requirement.

  • Welsh Government has set ambitious embodied and operational carbon targets for the public estate.
  • NHS England has committed to becoming the world's first net zero national health service.
  • The Ministry of Defence the UK higher education sector, local authorities and housing associations are all working to net zero commitments their own boards and stakeholders have already signed off.
  • DfE mandates Net Zero in Operation on new school builds

For these customers, choosing a contractor with a credible sustainability track record is a procurement requirement. And it is the area in which the gap between contractors who say the right things and contractors who can actually deliver them is widest.

A wider view of sustainability

Carbon matters. So does everything else.

Now or Never sits alongside our long-standing commitments to:

  • Social value and social mobility, through programmes including our Building Lives Foundation, the BPIC Skills programme for under-represented talent, and our Champions of Place model that embeds local employment and community investment in every project.
  • Biodiversity and natural capital, including delivering schemes to the Building with Nature standard.
  • Supply chain ethics and fair pay, as a Real Living Wage employer that requires fair pay across our sites, and an industry leader on prompt payment performance.
  • Diversity and inclusion, with a goal of gender parity across all levels of our workforce by 2030.

Brilliant buildings only build a brilliant world if the way they are made, by whom, for whom, with what materials, with what social and environmental footprint, is brilliant too. That is the standard we are working to.

Why we are doing this

Willmott Dixon is one of the largest privately and family-owned construction companies in the UK. We are now into our fifth generation of family leadership, and approaching our 175th anniversary in 2027. The decisions we take are taken with the long view, measured in decades and lifetimes, not quarters and shareholder updates.

The next generation of buildings will outlive most of the people now responsible for delivering them. That is exactly why we are building them this way.

Now or Never is not a slogan. It is a deadline.