Furness Partnership releases new, in-house embodied carbon calculator

The production of steel and cement collectively contributes to roughly 10% of global green-house gas emissions. This is huge; however these are also key construction materials and their production won’t be decarbonised overnight. We have thus created a new, in-house carbon calculator specifically for concrete and steel that compares the carbon intensity of steel selection types, as well as concrete by strength grade and carbon targets. This calculator allows our engineers to make quick carbon comparisons between design options, early on in the project, so as to enable successful carbon mitigation by influencing the design.

This tool has proven to be particularly useful for our smaller, refurb projects (of which we do many), which require intricate, manual detailing but are not mobilised digitally. It is also useful at early concept stages when, again, digital models have not yet been created, but design criteria needs to be confirmed. As a result, our engineers are able to provide clients with data based carbon comparison for design concepts at any stage of the project.

This work supports our commitment to the Structural Engineers Declare a Climate and Biodiversity Emergency requirements; accelerating the use of quantatitive analysis to actively reduce our carbon impact in construction.