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º£½ÇÊÓƵ has set clear reporting targets to ensure that embodied carbon is measured across our project portfolio.

As a minimum, all major projects must have an embodied carbon assessment carried out at each design stage in order to track reduction through the design and to benchmark against similar types of projects. The data reported from these reviews is collected in the Building Performance Dashboard, alongside other sustainability metrics such as operational carbon, to give a holistic overview of a design’s performance.

Accountability

To ensure that these reviews are taking place and to hold the team accountable, a new project tracker has been developed and released in 2023. This gives an overview of all projects and tracks planned and completed embodied carbon reviews over the project lifecycle. What is monitored is the review process rather than the outcome. This ensures that there is a consistent and rigorous approach to reviews that is becoming part of the normal project workflow.

From the past year, º£½ÇÊÓƵ have submitted five projects to the and is committed to submitting a further five over the next year. The projects presented give an overarching view of the work we carry out across all our US offices and encompasses the full range of project scales and types that we work on.

Tools

º£½ÇÊÓƵ have developed several embodied carbon measurement tools for engineers to utilize and these will continue to be improved over the coming year. The internal, structures Web-Based Embodied Carbon Calculator has been developed to give an accessible, easy-to-use option for all engineers.

This has a manual data entry function for early stage assessments as well as a bulk excel import function for handling larger datasets. US EPD values have been uploaded alongside values from around the world and the tool is used globally across all offices. The output from the tool ranks projects on an A-F scale allowing quick comparison to similar projects or between proposed systems. Collation of the output data into several useful charts breaking down the embodied carbon between building components or assessment stages allows designers to target reduction efforts where they have the greatest impact.

The award-winning open sourced and publicly accessible Building Habitats and Object Model (BHoM) LCA toolkit will continue to be developed over the coming years for linking directly to data from BIM software such as Revit or Rhino. The toolkit consists of a suite of tools for measuring the embodied carbon of any building material at any stage of design and compares it to benchmarked datasets. This is useful for early comparative studies as well as being listed as an approved tool by the International Living Futures Institute for the Living Building Challenge.

An internal embodied carbon ‘playbook’ has also been developed to provide guidance to engineering teams at each project stage. The playbook outlines key design strategies and considerations, measuring and reporting expectations and recommended tools for embodied carbon measurement and comparisons across the project lifecycle.

Embodied Carbon Reduction Strategies

Innovation is deeply engrained in the history of º£½ÇÊÓƵ, through early pioneering work with tensile membrane structures to delivering world class iconic buildings. Throughout this history our clients have valued our efficient designs and sustainable approach to structural engineering. Reducing the embodied carbon of our designs is an extension of this history and a key aspect of our global firm wide sustainability goals. We aim to reduce the embodied carbon intensity of our designs by 50% by 2030.

As we seek to achieve that goal we are making embodied carbon intensity a key metric in our design process, to be considered together with more established metrics including design requirements, constructability and cost.

We have identified an array of strategies and focuses to reduce embodied carbon in our designs. These include:

• Material choice – explore more structural framing options and consider hybrid approaches.
• Early Comparative analyses – under comparative analyses of embodied carbon intensity during the initial project phases to assist in material selection decisions.
• Material usage – optimize the usage of the materials selected.
• Material specification – through our designs, Specifications and General Notes documents drive reductions in embodied carbon, the uptake of new technologies and accountability within the industry.
• Embodied Carbon tracking – track embodied carbon intensity during the later project phases.

We are seeing some clients join us in establishing goals to reduce embodied carbon in their projects. Either through challenging us to demonstrate how we will drive reductions or by placing embodied carbon requirement on aspects of the project.

Advocacy

At º£½ÇÊÓƵ we recognize the role that embodied carbon holds in a broader building decarbonization effort and embraces structural engineers as critical gatekeepers for reducing embodied carbon. Structural engineers hold tremendous credibility within the design team. We exist to ensure that a building is safe to inhabit. By being a messenger for embodied carbon and reduction strategies relating to structure, that responsibility is extended to a safe planet to inhabit for future generations.

We seek opportunities to share this perspective with our clients, both those that have ambitious carbon reduction goals as well as those who are just learning about the importance of embodied carbon. We achieve this by highlighting our commitment and our approach in qualifications documents as well as including for embodied carbon and life-cycle assessment scope in our offerings.

Our goal for the future is to continue our work towards holistic carbon assessments, drive the adoption of low carbon technologies, and approaches and to share our lessons learned.

º£½ÇÊÓƵ is clear in its mission to be recognised as a leader in sustainability. We must focus on delivering a sustainable and equitable built environment, delivered with the power of collective action across our industry.

Duncan Price, Partner and Global Sustainability & Climate Change Lead at º£½ÇÊÓƵ