The carbon footprint is more than a hot topic for everyone in the construction industry. Let’s take a look at what this means for manufacturers.
An economic challenge
One of the main sources of CO2 emissions for a manufacturer is its supply chain.
Between the carbon footprints of the components, raw materials and their transport, it is easy to be measured. However, the current situation (shortage of components, increase in the cost of raw materials, increase in the price of transport) creates an increasingly close correlation between cost and carbon footprint.
It is often more cost-effective to look for suppliers closer to home.
Similarly, if we look at the production side, significant increases in energy prices are now forcing manufacturers to optimise their consumption and, in a sense, to reduce their emissions. But the carbon footprint of a product is not limited to its production, the carbon footprint of its use must also be taken into account.
Environmental data and competitiveness
In recent years, there has been a paradigm shift in construction. A project is no longer judged solely on price and overall performance, a third point must be added: environmental performance.
Is managing your environmental data a formality?
It seems utopian to have a single format that satisfies all the players in the construction industry, as well as the different calculation methods.
The solution would be to be able to easily format these data according to the needs, which represents an additional effort for the manufacturers. In addition, standards are likely to evolve and may differ from one market to another. For example, one piece of data under German regulations may be a combination of several pieces of data under French regulations.
It would then be obvious to harmonise the regulations, even if only at European level, but this takes time. It becomes imperative for manufacturers to have a strong expertise on these subjects and to have a powerful solution to aggregate these data. In order to have more flexibility and ease to adapt to different players and markets, and thus continue to develop their business.
To conclude, it can be said that manufacturers are currently in a transition period with regard to environmental data, but powerful data management solutions are present on the market. There is a growing interest in keeping up with all markets and distributing data in the right formats to the right players.
At BIM&CO, we offer manufacturers tailor-made solutions to better manage and optimise environmental data.
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