Laing O’Rourke decarbonises bids with new carbon calculator

Laing O’Rourke has developed an innovative carbon calculator that can decarbonise project bids by up to 19%.

The tool can quickly analyse levels of embodied carbon in digital designs, enabling its technical team to reduce the carbon content of projects.

The embodied carbon content of the sub- and super-structure elements of a typical building project can account for more than half of the upfront embodied carbon.

Since last spring, Laing O’Rourke’s in-house technical leaders have been refining the calculator using it on 14 bid submissions.

Phase one of the carbon calculator uses an internal Laing O’Rourke app, which automates the analysis of the digital model.

It extracts and indexes key information relating to a project design, such as component quantities and classification information.

In phase two of the process, the app connects to a second database that houses all of Laing O’Rourke’s carbon material data.

The contractor’s material database has been developed using information provided from the Inventory of Carbon and Energy (ICE) database and continues to grow as the business adds Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) data from its supply chain partners.

Rossella Nicolin, Structures Technical Director at Laing O’Rourke, said: “The construction sector faces a major challenge in finding ways to reduce scope 3 emissions. This breakthrough tool helps us start to make progress. We are looking to broaden the tool’s application to help us decarbonise other standard components of builds and apply it to facades as well as structural works.”

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