By Ben Townsley, Managing Director, Pronamics
Civil construction is about to receive new mandatory climate reporting obligations when it comes to carbon emissions. How are you going to go about estimating emissions in your tenders?
From 1 July 2024, Tier 1 companies will be legally obligated to report upon their climate-related risks and opportunities. Tier 2 and 3 companies will follow in subsequent years. Given all of our users will be affected by these changes, it has been at the front of our minds when it comes to our estimating software.
Expert Estimation uses first principles to build up estimates from the basic building blocks of a project. From there, assign resources to your direct cost schedule items and add your overhead cost schedule items. Once you know how much it will cost you to complete, add your margin to produce a project total and submit your tender.
The new legislation means being able to estimate carbon emissions is a must. We’ve been in consultation with clients, particularly Tier 1, and have implemented a strategy to deal with this challenge. Assigning carbon values to resources is one way of determining the quantity of emissions in a project, but it isn’t that simple. We are planning for the three different scopes of carbon emissions.
Scope 1 – Direct emissions
♦ From owned or controlled sources (i.e. fuel used by facilities and company vehicles)
Scope 2 – Indirect emissions
♦ From purchased electricity, steam, heating and cooling consumed by the company (i.e purchased electricity, heating and cooling at operating locations)
Scope 3 – Supply chain emissions
♦ All other indirect emissions in a company’s supply chain (i.e. goods and services, business travel and employee commuting)
Each resource will have an effective volume of carbon it contributes to the project across one or more scopes. By nominating those volumes against individual resources, Expert Estimation can summarise and calculate the total volume of carbon.
Who decides the rate?
Each individual business is responsible for the values entered. However, there are a growing number of professional firms that generate these values on your behalf to use in your projects.
Can rates be pulled from a linked library project?
The carbon values that each resource contributes could be included in a library and reused across multiple projects. Values may need to change for ‘per project’ reasons (such as geography, location, availability of resources, etc).
Can the rate be altered?
Like any of the values in Expert Estimation, the value entered against a resource for a scope can be modified at any time.
What about reporting?
There will be a range of reporting and analysis options available to interrogate the information, so you can categorise and summarise calculated carbon information as needed. With 1 July 2024 not that far away, we are continuing to develop Expert Estimation so that managing carbon tracking becomes even more streamlined and efficient. We plan to ensure our users have the tools they need to meet their legislative obligations.
Contact us to discuss your organisation’s needs leading up to this change, so you’ll be ready.
Pronamics is a leading provider of cost estimation and project management solutions. Our flagship product, Expert Estimation, produces fast, accurate and detailed estimates for the infrastructure industry. For more information, head to www.pronamics.com.au
