Intelligent solutions to digitally decarbonise construction

Con­struc­tion has a prob­lem: car­bon. Accord­ing to the World Green Build­ing Coun­cil, the built envi­ron­ment is respon­si­ble for 39% of all car­bon emis­sions. To put that in per­spec­tive, the glob­al avi­a­tion indus­try accounts for lit­tle more than 2% of anthro­pogenic CO2.

Cli­mate action is now the new nor­mal

Of course, cli­mate change is not a new prob­lem for busi­ness, in gen­er­al; or con­struc­tion, in par­tic­u­lar. Mor­gan Sin­dall Con­struc­tion, for exam­ple, has been oper­at­ing at the fore­front of action to decar­bonise the built envi­ron­ment now for more than a decade.

The firm is part of the con­struc­tion and regen­er­a­tion busi­ness Mor­gan Sin­dall Group, which has set itself an ambi­tious tar­get to achieve net zero car­bon emis­sions by 2030. In recog­ni­tion of its efforts, the group was award­ed an ‘A’ score for lead­er­ship in 2020 from CDP, the not-for-prof­it char­i­ty that runs the glob­al car­bon dis­clo­sure sys­tem, and for the sec­ond year in a row, were recog­nised in the Finan­cial Times Sta­tista Cli­mate Change Leader list, which looks at firms who’ve achieved the largest reduc­tion in green­house gas emis­sions inten­si­ty.

In today’s mar­ket, address­ing cor­po­rate respon­si­bil­i­ties to both the plan­et and soci­ety are fast becom­ing the new nor­mal for suc­cess in the built envi­ron­ment and the busi­ness case is clear, says Pat Boyle, man­ag­ing direc­tor at Mor­gan Sin­dall Con­struc­tion: “Enhanced by a strong focus on social val­ue, our ambi­tion is to be the most sought-after and sus­tain­able busi­ness in our indus­try. Cen­tral to this vision is our strat­e­gy for decar­bon­is­ing com­mu­ni­ties, which under­pins and aligns with our own net zero tar­gets.”

Bring­ing it all togeth­er under the ban­ner of Intel­li­gent Solu­tions, the over­ar­ch­ing approach is for Mor­gan Sin­dall to com­bine dig­i­tal and plat­form design capa­bil­i­ties, along with mod­ern meth­ods of con­struc­tion (MMC) and inno­v­a­tive car­bon reduc­tion tools, to cre­ate unique, sus­tain­able, and inspir­ing places for its cus­tomers.

How do these prin­ci­ples actu­al­ly man­i­fest in prac­tice, at a project lev­el?

Lessons in fast-track school build­ing

In 2021, Mor­gan Sin­dall had no few­er than 30 dig­i­tal con­struc­tion projects live on site, plus anoth­er 36 in pre-con­struc­tion stage, with a total val­ue of £1.55bn.

In Ayles­bury, the new 1,080-place Kings­brook Sec­ondary School, com­plete with sixth form and addi­tion­al spe­cial edu­ca­tion­al needs unit, is on sched­ule to open in time for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year in Sep­tem­ber 2022.

Val­ued at £35m, this low-CO2 project is being built in accor­dance with Buck­ing­hamshire Coun­ty Council’s com­mit­ment to achiev­ing zero car­bon by 2050. It fea­tures renew­able ener­gy gen­er­a­tion from solar pan­els that will pro­duce around 28,600 kWh per year.

As its Intel­li­gent Solu­tion, Mor­gan Sin­dall opt­ed for MMC, using struc­tured insu­lat­ed pan­els (SIPs) for all areas of exter­nal wall buildup. Made from a recy­cled mate­r­i­al, SIPs are both quick to install and offer long-term ener­gy effi­cien­cy. They enhance the building’s ther­mal per­for­mance over time and improve air tight­ness. This will make the school eas­i­er and cheap­er to heat and main­tain, cut­ting CO2 emis­sions and run­ning costs.

Inno­v­a­tive mod­u­lar tech­nol­o­gy has also been deployed to cre­ate much-need­ed pupil places across a trio of new pri­ma­ry schools in Der­by. Hack­wood Pri­ma­ry Acad­e­my, High­fields Spencer Acad­e­my and most recent­ly Ravens­dale Infant School, all need­ed to be designed, pro­cured and deliv­ered on a tight time­line, and off-site man­u­fac­tured mod­ules offered the per­fect Intel­li­gent Solu­tion.

On edu­ca­tion sec­tor projects where speed is of the essence, Mor­gan Sin­dall can use its MySchool solu­tion to fast-track the design stage. This was espe­cial­ly impor­tant on the 600-place £17m Eden Girl’s Lead­er­ship Acad­e­my in Small Heath, Birm­ing­ham.

An intel­li­gent dig­i­tal design tool, the MySchool plat­form is the result of 12 years of expert devel­op­ment and invest­ment in deliv­er­ing auto­mat­ed and stan­dard­ised solu­tions. It pro­vides project teams with the free­dom to choose between tra­di­tion­al or mod­ern meth­ods of con­struc­tion (MMC) such as vol­u­met­ric and pan­el struc­tures, all while offer­ing time sav­ings and added cost-effi­cien­cy.

For Birm­ing­ham City Coun­cil, this proved invalu­able, as the exist­ing city cen­tre acad­e­my was fail­ing to meet stan­dards and deemed unfit for use. With tem­po­rary accom­mo­da­tion already hur­ried into use, achiev­ing project com­ple­tion five weeks ear­ly was a major boost.

Team­work and tools to tar­get tonnes

Fun­da­men­tal to such achieve­ment on-site is a col­lab­o­ra­tive approach to project deliv­ery. This way of work­ing seeks to incor­po­rate the skills and inno­va­tion of strate­gic sup­ply chain part­ners at every turn, as well as the crit­i­cal input of the industry’s best con­sul­tants.

In effect, sus­tain­abil­i­ty is a team game. As good as any team might be, how­ev­er, it needs the tools to do the job. This is why, as part of its Intel­li­gent Solu­tions approach, Mor­gan Sin­dall has devel­oped its dig­i­tal car­bon mod­el­ling tool Car­bon­i­Ca.

Exter­nal­ly val­i­dat­ed by lead­ing glob­al con­sul­tants Arup, Car­bon­i­Ca mea­sures whole-life car­bon emis­sions at the project design and con­struc­tion stages, also entire build­ing life­cy­cle. Since its launch last year, it has enabled Mor­gan Sin­dall to save hun­dreds of thou­sands of tonnes of car­bon being emit­ted into the atmos­phere.

To ren­der such vol­umes achiev­able, this tool pin­points exact­ly where car­bon sav­ings can be made, putting cus­tomers in a posi­tion to make envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly and cli­mate-for­ward deci­sions based on mean­ing­ful and robust data.

This is what makes solu­tions intel­li­gent: they ensure respons­es to the cli­mate emer­gency are informed by sci­ence and engi­neer­ing, not just good inten­tions and guess­work.

Why twin­ning is win­ning on car­bon

Push­ing the enve­lope still fur­ther on sus­tain­abil­i­ty, Mor­gan Sin­dall has worked with lead­ing busi­ness­es from across the built envi­ron­ment on a ground­break­ing dig­i­tal twin project.

Known as Cir­cu­lar Twin, the ini­tia­tive has involved dig­i­tal­ly revis­it­ing the build­ing process on an already-com­plet­ed school, rework­ing the scheme to low­er car­bon, start to fin­ish.

The study was able to explore rad­i­cal exper­i­men­ta­tion with new work­ing meth­ods, notably show­ing how the ultra-ear­ly alliance of design­ers, clients, con­trac­tors, and the sup­ply chain leads to sig­nif­i­cant cuts in whole-life car­bon for mod­est cap­i­tal cost uplift.

In com­par­i­son to the orig­i­nal school, built as recent­ly as 2017, Cir­cu­lar Twin achieved a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in whole-life car­bon, upfront embod­ied car­bon, annu­al ener­gy con­sump­tion and for­est con­sump­tion, as well as deliv­er­ing cap­i­tal expen­di­ture with­in stan­dard bud­getary para­me­ters over an asset’s life­time.

The project effec­tive­ly broke the pro­cure­ment con­ven­tions that typ­i­cal­ly shack­le car­bon-reduc­tion inno­va­tion, to reap huge poten­tial ben­e­fits. Tim Clement, head of car­bon and envi­ron­ment, at Mor­gan Sin­dall Con­struc­tion, says: “Cir­cu­lar Twin rep­re­sents a true indus­try-first for inno­va­tion and a cred­i­ble tem­plate for a rev­o­lu­tion­ary new approach to project deliv­ery in the built envi­ron­ment. It is pos­si­ble to cut car­bon and save ener­gy, at acces­si­ble cost – and we now have the hard data to prove it.”

To find out more, please vis­it morgansindallconstruction.com

Pro­mot­ed by Mor­gan Sin­dall