9 ProjectSight White Paper
5 Pivotal Steps to Reduce Embodied Carbon on Your Next Building Project
Conclusion
As an industry, construction has a limited time to achieve ambitious targets. However,
the industry's future environment and economic success rely on the collective efforts that
contractors, owners, and other stakeholders make now—in full recognition of the challenges ahead.
Rather than an arduous challenge, though, construction professionals should view this as an
opportunity to connect a net-zero strategy to overall digital transformation. This fundamental
shift will allow efficiency and productivity advancements other industries have seen while also
creating sustainable jobs and new markets for future generations to come. Already, green
building has created millions of jobs and generated hundreds of billions of dollars to the U.S.
economy
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. Construction leaders should seek to continue the trend, maximizing their efforts to
achieve net-zero embodied carbon.
Reducing rework and waste is also a critical element and the financial incentives here are clear. According
to an ENR article, rework costs can run between 2% to 20% of a project's total contract amount. If this isn't
a case for change perhaps considering the environmental impacts resulting from wasted material, labor
and additional transportation may be. We need to prioritize upfrontup front planning and enhanced
project and stakeholder communication to reduce the inefficiencies in our industry and pave the way
towards net-zero.
Owners can and must set forth a roadmap to only building projects that have zero embodied carbon.
For existing assets, the decision to renovate versus rebuild can have crucial impacts, on top of ensuring
correct operational frameworks to maximize the life of the asset. Extending the operational life of a
building or infrastructure asset through regular maintenance, repurposing, or renovating existing assets
and ultimately reducing end of life emissions through recycling will allow us to become net-zero.
