Let's start your decarbonisation journey

Find out more about our collaborative approach

We've distilled all our findings so far into this routemap to guide your carbon aspirations and KPIs into one actionable plan from end-to-end. The decisions and research often gained during the early engagement period may determine whether your project is best suited to a new build or retrofit route. Find out more about the tools used at each stage of the journey overleaf >>

Our approach for your project

Retrofit/New build routes #2

What is our Influence pack?

The pack proposes project standards, metrics and methodologies that are relevant to the scheme’s lifecycle aspirations and minimum standards, within standard budgetary parameters.

It's a collaboration between the contractor, design team and client, to reach a consensus on how the project should proceed from a lifecycle point of view, forming part of the project brief and budget and covering whole life carbon, whole life cost, circular economy and biodiversity.The document supports and enables customer aspirations regarding the whole life of an asset, and in particular its positive contribution to climate change mitigation. It is used in conjunction with CarboniCa to review the outputs of processes and materials vs the aspirations of the customer to establish an initial project plan.

Influence pack in action: Bramcote College

Bramcote College is a new build secondary school, currently in RIBA Stage 3. The customer has aspirations for the building to be net zero in operation and we utilised the influence pack during a stage 2 carbon workshop to facilitate discussions around carbon targets and how we could utilise CarboniCa to achieve them.The team has now shared the Influence pack, which includes the proposed carbon reduction findings, driven by CarboniCa to drive conversations with the Design Team and define the RIBA stage 4 design.The project will endeavour to meet the following targets upon completion:

Lifecycle Embodied Carbon: 800 kgCO2e/m2 GIA

Whole Life Carbon: 1650 kgCO2e/m2 GIA

Operational Energy Use Intensity (EUI): 75 kWh/m2 GIA/year

Retrofit/New build routes #3/4

Find out more Supply chain engagement

Exceptional customer experiences, sustainable innovations and timely delivery are only ensured by working with the best supply chain business in the industry.

We aim to create a culture of best-practice and innovation sharing in our supply chain to allow us to find new ways of reducing carbon from our projects and delivering the best service for our customers during pre-construction, construction and aftercare stages.This has been achieved via our intiative the 10 Tonne Carbon Challenge, an exercise we undertake with our supply chain and site teams at multiple points in the year to collaborate and share new products, processes and carbon savings.

Supply chain engagement in action: Westvale Park

Westvale Park Primary Academy, £8.6m saw the construction of a new nursery (30 places) and 2FE Primary School (420 places) in Horley. During the workshop stage the team worked with a local supplier to workshop the buildilng form to find the best possible solution, swapping a steel frame for a timber one.Not only was the solution lower in carbon, but the frame travelled a short distance as the supplier, Streif UK manufactured in the area. The team achieved a significant reduction in large vehicle deliveries with this solution, which was well-received in a growing residential area.The results were:

798 tonnes of carbon saved, equivalent to heating 295 UK homes for a year

85% reduction on large vehicle traffic in the community

Retrofit/New build routes #3/4

What is the low carbon inspiration library?

Our database of low carbon guides and industry research to aid our project teams to deliver low carbon buildings.

The low carbon inspiration library is stored within our carbon & energy toolkit. At the early stages of a project, where the greatest carbon reduction gains can be made, we can contribute ideas and inspiration to steer the design to lower carbon outcomes.Our low carbon inspiration library is a growing set of guidance notes and external links to share ideas and best practice about low carbon design and procurement. To date this library, combined with the results of our 10 Tonne Challenge with out supply chain, has resulted in over 38,000 tonnes of carbon being saved.

Retrofit/New build routes #5

What is CarboniCa?

CarboniCa is our intelligent carbon reduction tool that creates carbon savings for our customers.

The digital tool is a part of our intelligent solutions approach to support our customers decarbonise. Since 2021, we've utilised CarboniCa to help our customers remove tens of thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions with its findings.CarboniCa cleverly highlights elements of the building that will result in higher emissions and suggests lower-carbon alternatives for the client, designers and our supply chain, ensuring that considered, environmentally-friendly decisions based on meaningful and robust data can be made.CarboniCa has been externally validated by Arup to the latest industry standards and is flexible to allow for different project types being undertaken. Its methodology is aligned to the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) framework for net zero buildings, the aims of the Construction Playbook and the RICS professional statement on whole life carbon assessments. CarboniCa is now undergoing another validation against the new RICS professional statement 2nd edition by Achilles. CarboniCa is also aligned to the BRE’s IMPACT database which allows Mat01 reporting. In 2023, CarboniCa secured two Innovate UK funding grants to develop the tool for educational purposes and to create an AI functionality.

A carbon reduction tool

Providing opportunity for carbon reduction by being easily customisable and automatically generating ideas to save carbon.

Robust

All assumptions can be evidenced and there is a clear logic and methodology.

Highly credible

Third-party verified in line with latest industry guidance, including RICS Whole Life Carbon Assessment for the Built Environment professional statement EN 15978.

Easy to use

CarboniCa uses simple questions which align with methods of measurement, with no carbon assessment expertise required.

It is amongst the most sophisticated and complete tools that I have seen, which nicely balances complexity and simplicity for most use cases.

Senior Consultant, Arup

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