Reducing Embodied Carbon in Footings

The environmental champion on the site undertook a dissertation on embodied carbon as part of his quantity surveying degree.

The dissertation included a focus group with a presentation which strived to determine the opinions and thoughts of the construction industry, a client representative for the project attended the focus group, this led to the environmental champion exploring embedded carbon with Nottingham City Homes and how they could consider the impact of embedded carbon in their projects.

This has been applied to the site with measurements taken to ascertain and reduce the embodied carbon/carbon footprint of the plots and subsequently reduced the environmental impact of the scheme through embodied carbon reduction engineering.

Plots at tender stage featured deep strip foundation footings (average depth 2.3m) due to poor ground conditions, the environmental champion undertook an exercise to consider the carbon that would be released into the atmosphere in comparison to ground improvement works.

Through undertaking this exercise the project team was able to prevent 116 tonnes of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere subsequently resulting in lowering the carbon footprint of the foundations of plots by 76% by utilising vibro-compaction ground improvement.