For the first time, developers of road and rail now have a consistent means to assess the carbon impacts of the trains, cars and lorries that use their services and can use this information to understand the total carbon impacts of infrastructure projects.

Led by Forum for the Future – the Highways Agency, RSSB (with participation from Network Rail), Atkins, and Balfour Beatty have agreed to look at the emissions of projects over their full lifecycles – managing carbon in the pre-design, design and construction activities, and also addressing and considering the carbon that arises during maintenance, operation, use and decommissioning activities.

By proactively managing and reducing carbon smartly, the construction sector plans to reduce unnecessary expenditure, making services more efficient and contributing to a long-term reduction in energy use.

The new approach or ‘framework’ is designed to help clients and project-leaders create processes that identify, manage and reduce carbon and focuses on the most significant, most controllable and most reducible carbon emissions associated with projects. The framework helps developers to:

• formally identify the projects’ participants and their contribution to the carbon of projects
• implement carbon management and reduction strategies
• understand the full scale of a project – the ‘project boundary’ – to decide which carbon sources to consider
• categorise the carbon within project boundaries to better understand where carbon can be managed, influenced and reported
• quantify the carbon, using actual data or realistic estimates where collection is not possible
• provide feed-back to the sector on lessons learnt and information gathered.

To enable take-up by contractors, the new carbon framework configures with project management processes already commonly used in road and rail infrastructure developments. And the concepts will also be applicable to all forms of project management.

The framework was developed through Forum For The Future’s Engineers of the 21st Century scheme. The project team consisted of young engineers from each of the partner organisations and was supported by a steering group, made up of representatives from the partner organisations and the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Ginny Clarke, Director of Network Services and Chief Highways Engineer for the Highways Agency, said: "The Highways Agency is pleased to be a significant part of the partnership developing this framework, which is closely aligned with our aim of protecting the environment whilst improving England's strategic road network. This innovative approach, involving young engineers working with Forum For The Future, will help form a common platform for carbon management in the infrastructure community".

Jonathan Garrett, Head of Environment at the Balfour Beatty Group said: "Balfour Beatty welcomes the development of a robust carbon management framework to allow organisations working on major infrastructure to align their thinking as we all work towards a common agenda for a low-carbon economy. We will be sharing this framework across our business to support the delivery of our 2020 vision for a sustainable Balfour Beatty. Central to our vision is the provision of low carbon solutions for our customers".

Len Porter, chief executive at RSSB said: "This new framework sits well with the broader sustainability thinking that the GB rail industry identifies with through the Sustainable Rail Programme, which RSSB facilitates – and particularly through the principle of becoming 'Carbon Smart'. It shows how environmental improvement links in with the financial bottom line, and more efficient business."

 Richard Craig, Major Projects Director, Highways & Transportation, Atkins said: "Carbon is an increasingly important consideration in projects so we need robust methods of measuring and tracking it throughout the design and construction process. Atkins' young engineers welcomed the chance to help develop this new framework as we realise that traditional success measures are now not enough. Just as world leaders are currently promising far-reaching action at the climate change talks in Copenhagen, the construction industry must do its best to innovate and curb the impacts of infrastructure on the environment."

Download a copy of the framework in the new report, Carbon Management for Infrastructure here

For a two-page summary click here

For all media enquiries:

Forum For The Future:
Lorna Pelly:  l.pelly@forumforthefuture.org, 020 7324 3601

Highways Agency:
Stuart.Thompson@highways.gsi.gov.uk

RSSB:
matthew.clements@rssb.co.uk

Network Rail:
mediarelations@networkrail.co.uk, 020 3356 8700

Atkins:
Louisa.Perry@atkinsglobal.com, 020 3356 8700

Balfour Beatty:
louise.mcculloch@balfourbeatty.com

– Ends –

NOTES FOR EDITORS

Forum For The Future
Forum for the Future – the not-for-profit sustainable development organisation – works in partnership with more than 100 leading companies and public sector organisations, helping them devise more sustainable strategies and deliver these in the form of new products and services.

Engineers of the 21st Century
The Engineers of the 21st Century (E21C) Programme started from the perceived need to accelerate change in the engineering profession to enable it to respond fully and positively to the challenge of sustainable development. In 2005 Forum for the Future began a close collaboration with the Royal Academy of Engineering to run a series of projects, carried out by young engineers, to explore different ways of meeting one or more of these challenges. The projects delivered interesting results that provoked debate and brought a new awareness to well-known problems within the engineering profession. For more information about Engineers of the 21st Century programme, see here