Visualising carbon and cost hot spots during design decision making.

A new project led by Anglian Water and developed thought the Ofwat Innovation Fund aims to support organisations to explore how they can deliver low whole life carbon and cost solutions. Aligned to PAS2080, it provides the detail on the processes, systems, behaviours and culture needed to be in place to ensure whole life carbon and cost information can be used by engineers and decision makers to enable sustainable solutions.

Context

The water industry is committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2030. This project will enable the water sector and its value chain to make informed decisions based on data insight and visualisations. Above all this project will guide the industry to move away from managing capital and operational carbon separately to cost and enable whole life carbon cost management and ensure that investment solutions are truly sustainable for customers, society, and the environment.

This project will build on the current PAS2080 carbon standard and its philosophy that reducing carbon reduces cost and support organisations by providing guidance on the framework, tools and processes required to transition to a true whole-life carbon cost management approach within investment programmes.

To go beyond existing best practice requires the visualisation of carbon and cost hotspots by integrating existing data models within the engineering platforms. This enables the engineering teams to challenge designs and optimise solutions in real time as they visualise the impacts made during early design.

Outcomes

This project has provided the guidance, feedback and principles to enable those both inside and outside the water sector to understand how they can embed a whole life carbon approach within their own organisations. This project has investigated the art of the possible and provided the inspiration for businesses to take the first steps to looking at their own data, processes, frameworks and change programmes to embed a true whole life carbon approach.