ORIS shares insight into its partnership with AECOM and Leicester City Council, through which they assessed the sustainability of 17 new pavement designs for Groby Road
Infrastructure projects have a significant impact on carbon emissions, with construction materials accounting for up to 85% of emissions.
However, sustainability goals often clash with the final outcome of a project, mainly because construction material choices are made at the last minute.
In an attempt to bridge this gap, ORIS, the first construction materials knowledge platform, partnered with infrastructure consultancy AECOM and road owner Leicester City Council to assess the sustainability of 17 pavement design options for the rehabilitation of A50 Groby Road, which aimed to modernise the road and create a pedestrian-friendly high street environment.
ORIS Materials Intelligence is a unique material sourcing database that links the project to locally available materials.
The first step of the Groby Road project involved populating local material sourcing locations, the products available, and their specifications. ORIS identified 17 asphalt sourcing locations within a 70-kilometre radius from the project, which were included in the database.
Using its core platform, ORIS and AECOM were able to assess 17 pavement design options using three project indicators over a 40-year design life.
These included CO2 emissions, estimated through the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) standards, which calculates the environmental impact of products or systems from raw material extraction to end-of-life stages, based on carbon models verified by Intertek.
“ORIS’s collaboration with AECOM and Leicester City Council has demonstrated the importance of sustainable design in infrastructure projects”
Additionally, cost estimation was based on technical cost analysis for materials, pavement and maintenance operations, and workforce plant and equipment.
Materials consumption was evaluated based on primary and secondary materials, including aggregates, concrete, asphalt, and cement treated material used in each pavement design option.
ORIS’s efficiency and ability to evaluate multiple designs enabled a quick project delivery, taking less than a month between data collection and report analysis.
Manual calculations for each project KPI for all 17 design options would not have been possible within this short timeline.
By leveraging ORIS’s materials intelligence platform, the A50 Groby Road project was able to achieve remarkable results, including reducing project costs by up to £2.5m (20%), cutting carbon emissions by up to 1.9m tonnes of CO2 (38%) – which is the amount of CO2 absorbed by 3.3bn trees over 10 years – and decreasing the consumption of local natural resources by 173,000 tonnes (22%); all while maintaining the durability and structural integrity of the pavement.
In conclusion, ORIS’s collaboration with AECOM and Leicester City Council has demonstrated the importance of sustainable design in infrastructure projects.
The use of ORIS’s materials intelligence platform has allowed the A50 Groby Road project to achieve significant decarbonisation, reduced costs, and decreased the consumption of local natural resources while creating a pedestrian-friendly high street environment.
Build in Digital Stakeholder ORIS is a construction materials platform for a smart use of resources and low impact infrastructure.
Image: Sanit Fuangnakhon/Shutterstock
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