How Digital Workflows Boost Sustainability and Help Contractors Prove It
Sustainability commitments and reporting have become regular and important parts of the bidding process for construction, and for public work in particular. So it’s no surprise that being able to stand by their credentials is a priority for road contractors who primarily work on public infrastructure.
As the EU works towards a target of climate neutrality by 2050, a sharp focus on sustainability in public procurement means that voluntary measures like the Green Public Procurement (GPP) criteria have become de facto rules for large-scale projects and will likely be followed by more concrete requirements. The Environmental Sustainability Strategy of National Highways in the UK contains similar considerations, while the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive requires large businesses to record and report sustainability data in great detail, and is slated to expand to smaller businesses in the near future.
The bottom line is that road contractors have to be clear on the environmental impact of their operations, confident that they can effectively and efficiently reduce that impact – and be able to prove this to win high-profile work.
Counting carbon
Understanding its emissions is an urgent and high-priority mission for the industry, and there are clear rewards for best practice, but expectations and practices differ across markets. Investment in emissions reduction is increasingly moving to powerful digital solutions that are squarely focused on the collection and management of all types of project data, including sustainability reporting.
There is a growing consensus on the value of digital workflows for accuracy and efficiency as well as emissions in road construction, but actual uptake is less consistent. Many contractors take a pragmatic approach depending on the requirements of their client and local authorities, with one eye on persistent tricky economic conditions that complicate investment in new technology. Nevertheless, the competitive edge offered by digital project management tools shouldn’t be ignored, because they are instrumental in delivering the fast and accurate work demanded by those at the helm of large-scale highway and infrastructure projects.
Integration platforms such as Aptix by Topcon bring together data from different parties’ software into a dashboard that can be used by project managers to monitor progress as well as fuel and materials expenditure. These can be used to highlight if a contractor has delivered on its promise of a more sustainable project.
Having an as-built digital twin for a road construction project allows contractors to show exactly how they’ve reduced emissions at each stage and the result of this work on the infrastructure delivered. This is the level of detail that bridges the gap between talking the talk and walking the walk on sustainability, and which will stand out in the bidding process.
One direction
Sustainability is by no means the only prerogative for contractors, who are also dealing with the economic squeeze, skills gaps, and high demand from customers for high-quality work delivered quickly. These are long-term challenges and addressing them individually on a project basis will only leave contractors consistently playing catch-up. Digital workflows offer the opportunity to respond strategically and build a new way of working that will improve a business’s ability to respond to all of these pressures.
Done right, this approach will bring both the step change that comes with a new way of working and the marginal gains that can be found by eliminating little inefficiencies in the cracks between operations. Haul truck operations is a part of the paving workflow that often has unrealized potential for these marginal gains. Haul Truck is an element of Sitelink3D, Topcon’s site management platform, specifically designed to deliver these marginal gains. It provides in-cab payload logging and haul monitoring that is reported in real time to site managers who can act immediately to root out inefficiencies such as excess idle time, or respond to issues quickly. quickly.
Proactive policy
There’s serious potential in digital construction, not least in the sharing of data to create national and international quality and sustainability benchmarks. Criteria such as the GPP in the EU are an important starting point, but contractors also need support to adopt the tools themselves, particularly now as they work to keep their heads above water in tricky markets. Mandates alone, however, aren’t the answer.
Forward-thinking policies from regulators need to be developed in tandem with other industry stakeholders and indeed contractors themselves, and those that succeed will likely be focused on gradual transitions to a digital-first status quo along a manageable timeline. Clarity is another important consideration – the European Commission recently adopted proposals to simplify the rules surrounding the CSRD in order to help businesses comply without losing their competitive edge in the process. It’s this sort of pragmatic policymaking that will help contractors who are aware of the benefits of digital workflows to take the leap towards more productive, efficient, and sustainable production.
Road construction can be a sustainable industry, and it must be if major economies are to hit their fast-approaching net zero targets. This puts the emphasis on contractors to find emissions savings from already squeezed operations and show their workings in the process. Digital workflow platforms are a no-brainer for this work and offer a path to smarter work on the whole. Currently, those who have embraced them have a serious advantage; by supporting widespread adoption, we can build an entire industry that leads by this example.
Article by Michael Gomes, vice president, global sustainability & CSR, at Topcon Positioning Systems
