Expanded integrated workflows for embodied carbon
computation in the Bentley iTwin platform have been announced by Bentley
Systems. With the help of the Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator, the
new integration enables carbon assessment in digital twin solutions for
infrastructure (EC3).
Building Transparency offers the knowledge, materials, and
techniques - such as EC3 - to address the role of embodied carbon in climate
change. Construction material suppliers and manufacturers are being encouraged
to invest in disclosure, transparency, and material innovations that lower the
carbon emissions of their products as a result of the EC3 tool and its
subsequent impact on the industry. These actions are driving demand for
low-carbon solutions.
EC3, a free, open-access tool created by the nonprofit
Building Transparency, enables benchmarking, assessment, and embodied carbon reductions with a focus on the initial supply chain emissions of construction
materials. Building Transparency offers the knowledge, materials, and
techniques - such as EC3 - to address the role of embodied carbon in climate
change. Construction material suppliers and manufacturers are being encouraged
to invest in disclosure, transparency, and material innovations that lower the
carbon emissions of their products as a result of the EC3 tool and its
subsequent impact on the industry. These actions are driving demand for
low-carbon solutions.
The EC3 integration enables the free, open-source EC3 carbon
database and calculator, Bentley's infrastructure digital twin solutions
powered by iTwin, and third-party applications built on the Bentley iTwin
platform, to simplify and accelerate the generation of carbon reporting and
insights. The Bentley iTwin platform is an open, scalable platform-as-a-service
that gives developers the tools they need to build and market products that use
digital twins to address actual infrastructure issues.
Designers and sustainability
engineers in the architectural, engineering, and construction sectors devote a
significant amount of time to manually exporting and compiling data from
quantity counts and bills of materials in order to evaluate or report on the
environmental impact of infrastructure projects. It may also be prone to
errors, necessitating further assurance of successful carbon tool intake.
Additionally, AEC professionals don't want to be restricted to using a single
carbon calculator because different calculators may produce different results
(for example, due to uncertainties in environmental product declarations), and
the requirements for carbon reporting and certification vary depending on the
project, the country, or the owner of the infrastructure.
Due to Building Transparency's open-source/open-access
approach, the additional integration with EC3 not only improves accuracy while
reducing time, but also offers uncertainty assessments of the EPD data and
raises carbon transparency. Using the Bentley iTwin platform, users may combine
engineering data produced by diverse design programs into a single perspective,
produce a uniform report of materials and quantities, and share it via cloud
synchronization with various carbon analysis systems, including now EC3.
WSP, which uses both the Bentley iTwin platform and the EC3
database on infrastructure projects like as the Interstate Bridge Replacement
program, is one of the shared users with an interest in this new connection.
According to Thomas Coleman, vice president of WSP USA, "for WSP, carbon
footprint analysis and reduction are crucial in planning, designing, building,
and running an infrastructure project from beginning to end." Better iTwin
interaction with EC3 is a game-changer for us on a number of infrastructure
projects, according to the author. The time and money required to provide
detailed embodied carbon analyses and reports along the design and construction
stages will be greatly decreased by implementing this relationship. In the long
run, we see this collaboration as another step toward open, always-updatable
digital twins of infrastructure, where carbon calculation and optimization are
inherent and transparent in all phases of the infrastructure lifecycle across
the entire value chain.
