How digital tools can help reduce infrastructure projects’ carbon footprint

For as long as civil engineers can remember, cost efficiencies have been the measure of a project’s success. But according to cost consultant Turner & Townsend’s director and digital lead Guy Beaumont, the dial is shifting.

“The climate crisis is starting to become apparent and industry is responding at pace,” says Beaumont. “Carbon reduction is now as important as cost.”

This focus on decarbonisation is reflected in the ICE’s State of the Nation: Infrastructure in 2024 report, published in January. It highlights engineers’ role in helping achieve United Nations sustainability goals.

Among the report’s proposals is that carbon management should be considered a core part of built environment delivery, in line with the PAS 2080: 2023 standard for holistic carbon management.

Beaumont says Turner & Townsend is working with asset operators across sectors including road, rail and water to provide better insight into the carbon impacts of their decisions.

He believes data has a critical role to play. “We’re seeing huge advances in the use of data to support the carbon agenda,” he says.

There’s no single piece of technology that will solve the carbon challenge

He notes that digital tools include established ones such as building information modelling (BIM), which can be used to replicate site operations to monitor and control emissions.

BIM can also provide monitoring of a building’s energy performance over its lifetime using Internet of Things sensors and data integration. 

There is also Turner & Townsend proprietary Embodied Carbon Calculator, a carbon accounting tool to enable clients to evaluate the carbon footprint of projects from early design stage to completion.

Beaumont emphasises that while both have an important role to play, “there’s no single piece of technology that will solve the carbon challenge”.

Instead, organisations must collaborate effectively and early, to ensure that data use is optimised. He says best practice is to “create a data model and associated data standards from the outset, so that everyone on a project is working to the same rules.”

Initiatives like Project 13, a collaborative enterprise-based model for constructing assets, is helping to support this approach, he says.

Under-utilisation of data is starkly evident from Turner & Townsend’s Digital First report, published last September.

Its survey of more than 100 specialists across major global infrastructure projects found that 61% of respondents said digital transformation was not driving their business strategy. Only 42% said their data was used to manage performance.

Beaumont concludes that cultural change regarding the use of data points is needed to progress. “Digital data and technology enable us to do the same things better, faster and with less. And I think if we can get all those things right, that enables us to unlock new business models, new ways of doing things.” 

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