NBS has entered a long-term partnership with BDP to develop generic carbon data for NBS LCA, a new life-cycle carbon assessment platform.
BDP is a global multidisciplinary practice of architects, designers, engineers and urbanists. Its main contribution has been the development of more than 1,300 pre-calculated generic assemblies, covering the most commonly used building fabric elements alongside key concrete and steel structural elements.
The assemblies provide whole-element carbon data, giving designers UK-relevant carbon benchmarks from the earliest stages of project design. Users can apply carbon rates to pre-configured elements including walls, floors and roofs, removing the need to manually build up material layers or calculate individual components at concept stage.
BDP also took part in collaborative workshops that informed the development of NBS LCA, which the companies said helped shape a tool aligned with UK construction workflows.
Lee Jones, head of sustainability at Hubexo, said: “BDP’s contribution to NBS LCA has been invaluable. Their depth of project experience and technical knowledge has directly shaped the generic assemblies at the heart of the platform.
“These assemblies give designers a reliable, UK-relevant starting point for carbon assessment, without the burden of building everything from scratch. This is exactly the kind of collaboration that moves the industry forward, and we’re proud to be working with BDP on a long-term basis.”
Julia Yao, associate, sustainability consultant at BDP, said: “Carbon assessment needs to be embedded in design from day one, not bolted on at the end. Working with NBS to develop its LCA product has been a genuine opportunity to put that principle into practice.
“The generic assemblies we developed draw on real project data and are designed to give designers meaningful, actionable carbon information at the concept stage. We’re delighted to see them at the core of a platform that will be used across the industry.”
NBS LCA integrates carbon calculations with live design work, drawing on structured data from Circular Ecology’s ICE Database and more than 12,500 verified, specification-ready construction products with environmental product declarations from NBS Source and ECO Portal.
NBS and BDP said they would continue developing the partnership over the coming months, with a shared commitment to improving the quality and accessibility of carbon data for UK construction professionals.
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