If you have or are getting close to setting a Net Zero alignment target for your interior fitout and refurbishment project(s) and wish to mobilise towards this, the first action is to measure the design and delivery work’s embodied carbon. This measurement of carbon is also called a Whole Life Carbon assessment or WLC assessment for short. To help those who may not have undertaken a WLC assessment yet and illuminate what this entails, it helps to draw a parallel between this and financial measurement on any project. In financial accounting, there is the measurement of £/$/€ and in WLC measurements we are measuring with kgCO2e units.
Measuring carbon is a matter of honesty and diligence right now as there is no legal accountability. Anyone can measure ‘some’ carbon of a project’s elements and say they have met the levels but this is not correct or true. The Net Zero target levels must be achieved while measuring all the items being included in an interior. This includes the major elements such as wallboards, wall studs, raised access floor panels and suspended ceiling tiles for example, and also metal trims for tiled surfaces, the dust seal treatment under the raised access floor, the door ironmongery, the ventilation diffusers part of the mechanical installation and so on. Anyone looking to align with the current good practice must measure the full scope of materials and products purchased.
Anywhere where there is spend of money measured in a financial budget, the same exactly must be applied to embodied carbon emissions measurement. Until embodied carbon is a regulatory requirement, the incentives for clients and teams to measure it all are not strong (lower fees and time) and rely on strong professionalism and true drivers for environmental change to ensure the right job. There are increasing numbers of clients and teams aligned with this but certainly not yet the norm from recent research evidence, and people must be cautious of greenwashing statements and being shortchanged when buying a service.
If you are looking to adopt WLC measurements on your interiors and refurbishment projects, you can ask competent companies (like ours!) for a service scope and quote to get you going with integrating this service and budgeting for these new professional fees and programme activities.
Things to be aware of and important to check across all parties include:
- The service starts as early in the project as possible and no later than RIBA Stage 2.
- The service completes at handover with as built information being used for the final carbon model/assessment.
- The service scope and days included must be in line with the RICS WLC assessment Professional Standard v2 quality and robustness level.
- In line with the above point, the assessment is to pick up the full scope and quantity detail of project elements and products.
- Issue a project WLC report reflecting the latest design and procurement changes at each RIBA Stage.
- Includes advisory scope and an adequate number of resource days that help the rest of the team understand the measurements and how to best make use of them in the designs.
Recommended selection advice to add to the above:
- Ensure experience of whole life system thinking is present, this will make the process count where it matters in the advisory given to you.
- Select a team with relevant experience to the nature of the project if possible; interiors are very different to whole buildings and infrastructure projects.
- The team needs to understand delivery and collection transport impacts and approaches.
- Understanding buildability and site operational impacts is key to ensuring accuracy during delivery.
As interior designers and sustainability experts, we integrate WLC in our regular design thinking, adding heaps of value through our appointment – although we call it doing design properly! The future of design professions must be to integrate life cycle thinking so we hope more and more designers and architects will also emulate this practice. We hope our Net Zero related training courses support this effort.
We’ll only move as an industry if there is collective change and we’re all into that!
