An early indication of the climate footprint

In November 2023, we had the honour of presenting an innovative solution to digitally interested people from all over the world at Autodesk University in Las Vegas where we showed a web application that is the result of a close interdisciplinary collaboration between our specialists in cost management, sustainability, BIM and digital development.

The application automatically retrieves data from various sources and turns the complex information into simple 3D visualisations. With that, it becomes easy to sort and rank building materials based on their different properties.

User experience in 3D
One of the data sources is the digital building model, which the design team works in and refines continuously with more and more information. The direct link to the working model is also the basis for an interactive 3D model that is constantly updated with the latest changes.

Even at an early stage when you only have a roughly sketched model, you can take the entire building apart and show the materials’ price or climate footprint from high to low – by using the simple colour scale of traffic lights.

The ability to shed light on sustainability and financial matters is possible as the application draws on Artelia’s own Data Hub, which, among other things, is able to deliver information about LCA, prices and construction time. Part of the basis comes from our cost management department and their price database based on our experience from other Artelia projects.

Petras Bagdonas, one of our specialists, participated in the development of the application:

As Petras points out, the very same functions can come into play when assessing the benefit of renovating and optimising a building rather than demolishing it.

We can e.g. isolate all facades and state which types of material they roughly consist of in percentages. With the application, we can see right away the price and CO₂ contribution to the overall account.

Dynamic design
As the project is refined with more details, we get an even better opportunity to evaluate design options by e.g. including heat loss and CO₂ consumption for heating.

The mere fact that the analyses can be made in real time at any stage gives a flexibility that is desired in many industrial projects.

Lars Bøgelund Jørgensen, who is division director of Pharma & Life Science at Artelia, therefore sees a quality that does not just concern making an impact on the design in the initial phases:

A gift for the future
The easy access to knowledge about the building’s components holds another significant potential ; if you want to ensure the best conditions possible for recycling the materials at a later stage, a strong data basis and simple navigation will be a great help – especially because you can sort the components based on strength ratio, chemistry and other conditions that are of significance to recycling.

Design for separation is therefore another parameter with which the application can operate, and it is an important step forward, says Brian Hurup-Felby, who is one of our experienced sustainability specialists: