Bachy Soletanche launches carbon calculator for plant & piling professionals
Specialist geotechnical contractors, Bachy Soletanche, has recently boosted its sustainability efforts with the introduction of its Carbon Calculator, which sees an environmental bill of quantities included with selected tender offers. With carbon emissions being a ‘hot topic’ in the construction industry amongst plant and piling professionals, the calculator provides a comparison between schemes offered to clients to promote not only the cost savings of designs but the environmental benefits too.
Throughout the development of the Carbon Calculator, Bachy has been able to identify that, depending on the technique and project scope, between 70-90% of its contract works’ carbon footprint arises from the use of concrete. Therefore any measures that can help to reduce this will help sustainability and have economic and environmental benefits.
The programme, which works in association with Bachy’s in-house estimating software, requires minimal data input from operators and has been welcomed by clients in the plant and piling professions who are similarly looking to improve their corporate social responsibility.
Paul Hodgson, Business Development Manager of Bachy Soletanche, commented:
“There are various opinions out there about whether carbon emissions are actually doing any harm to the planet or not. As employees of an engineering company, we base our decisions on the information we have available and, in this case, the majority of the scientific information tells us that the planet is warming up and suggests that we must act now to protect future generations from climate change. The Carbon Calculator enables us to demonstrate to clients the measures we’re putting in place to reduce our CO2 emissions.”
As an organisation, Bachy Soletanche is also concentrating on cutting down the amount of energy and fuel use in offices and plant yards, assessing resource use for each site, collating company car fuel use, lowering noise emissions, video conferencing to save on travel expenses and promoting sustainable action using toolbox talks. Staff are also encouraged to give talks to students to ‘give back’ to the community.