Description
Key Learnings
- Learn how to master the fundamentals of Autodesk's Total Carbon Management Solution.
- Learn how to apply Autodesk tools to quantify and manage project carbon footprints at each design stage.
- Learn how to effectively implement real-world carbon-reduction strategies.
Speakers
- CBCarol BattleCarol has twenty years experience working with global firms to drive innovation and sustainability outcomes.
- Justin TaylorJustin has more than 30 years’ experience working with Autodesk solutions across the globe. Having previously focused on helping AEC firms digitize their workflows, he is now super excited to join the Autodesk Sustainability Practice and support customers as they strive to meet their Net Zero goals. “Our customers design and build the world, so we are in the perfect position to influence and enable more sustainable design practices” He brings along expertise in areas such as reality capture for refurb and retrofit, low carbon design and material circularity, health & wellbeing design and analysis in buildings. Outside of work Justin enjoys spending time with his family and his hyper-active Cocker Spaniel, Diego, in the great outdoors, exploring the countryside and the UK’s historical sites of interest. He is also a bookworm, amateur bonsai grower and trying to become a better guitar player. Challenges don’t get bigger than this and we all need to work together to build a #BETTERWORLD
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CAROL BATTLE: Hi, and thanks for joining us to look at the sustainability-focused solutions that are being produced by Autodesk. Just going to start with the obligatory safe harbor statement and move on to introduce myself and my colleague who has also been involved in the production of these solutions and will also be involved in the live presentation at AU.
So my name is Carol Battle. I'm based in Melbourne, Australia. And I'm the sustainability solutions global lead at Autodesk. I've spent my career at the nexus between technology-- particularly emerging tech-- design management, and business management, with a focus on realizing sustainability at scale.
Justin has been working within Autodesk for a really long time and been working across BIM and construction and is known for his breadth and depth of technical and implementation knowledge of technologies across the AEC solutions. Justin is the AEC solution product manager at Autodesk.
And what we're going to go through today is looking at sustainability, and where we've come from, and where we are, and how that has informed what we as a team are doing and are trying to solve. We're going to look at what is sustainability in the built environment across the board and then have a look at what are the sustainability outcome-based solutions that we as a team have been developing and what are the problems that this is intended to solve.
So the problem statement is that customers are trying to solve sustainability challenges at scale. They have, in the past, been trying to save-- solve sustainability challenges, typically one-off on a project or for one particular customer, but now they're trying to solve sustainability-- however they're defining that, whether that's about energy, or carbon, or materials-- integrated into their processes and across the board. And this operationalizing and operational efficiency requires a completely different approach.
But how did we get to where we are today? Well, initially, with the design-- and we're thinking about both the design of buildings, and the built environment, and the design of products, and products that go into buildings as an ecosystem-- we had manual drafting quite separated from the construction process. There was no sustainability or no complex analysis. It was based on an architect or a designer's knowledge of materials. And mostly there was no analysis because there was no requirement for it and no one really thought about it.
And not until in the 90s when the Brundtland Commission report looked at the future of the environment and the impacts of sustainability for what the limits on growth did these concerns start to be an issue. And it really wasn't until-- so that was in the late '80s, the Brundtland Commission report, and it wasn't until the '90s when we had the development of things like LEED and Green Star that we had architects looking at how to solve sustainability analysis within a design.
But even then, that analysis was really disconnected from the design. Typically, it was done as a specialization and not integrated within, just because the technology didn't allow for that.
But if we look at the modern era where we're looking at data disaggregated, distributed, where we can analyze vast volumes of data, we really have the opportunity now to integrate that into design. And we're seeing that both in the tools that Autodesk is producing. And in the workflows that our customers are implementing. And where that's going with AI and advanced automation is just accelerating rapidly, as you all know.
And what does that look like across different capabilities to efficiently operate-- operationalized sustainability? And what do we mean by that?
Well, sustainability in design is supporting complex decision-making. And that complex decision-making-- whether through simulation, or having the computers solve that problem and generate the design automatically, or generating that based on models that have been learned-- really requires a solid basis of digital design to start with.
And all of these capabilities are blending that and moving a lot faster than anyone could have ever predicted. And they will all enable a more rich and complex analysis of designs to be able to predict the impacts of decisions that are difficult to foresee in isolation in complex systems. And in the-- and what we're seeing is these sustainability considerations being able to be built in by default.
When we're talking about the built environment, we're talking about places and the design of places, not just buildings, but precincts, and cities, and infrastructure. And the creation of that, the construction of it, the fabrication of those materials and inputs in our factories. The creation of those products and those inputs and the design of those products. And it is an entire ecosystem of the built environment where sustainability considerations are required across that supply chain.
And what we're seeing from customers is that rate of change is accelerating. This graphic comes from the State of Design and Make report from 2024, a report that is produced by Autodesk looking across time at trends in the design and make for the built environment and for our customers. And what we can see here is that all-- across all segments customers can now see that sustainability will be able to drive long-term revenue for them.
And we're also seeing that customers are increasingly seeing themselves as sustainability leaders. And that has shifted significantly over the last 12 months, particularly in America. But the question then is, how does-- how do you differentiate yourselves if you're all leaders? And we to be the fact is that the differentiation comes from being-- of being able to operationalize and to be able to drive efficiency in how you're doing what you're doing.
And while we're looking at this globally, it's also really interesting to look at the rate of change in different markets. So I'm just looking at this from an Australian lens because the Australian data is really interesting, but the data for your region might also be interesting. So talk to the teams at Autodesk that you work with if you'd like to understand how fast is this change happening in your region. Or you might already know because you're experiencing that. But what we see in Australia is that over the last 12 months that rate of change has increased significantly from the market seeing value in both short-term and long-term to the point that it was lagging the global demand and is now exceeding in terms of short-term impetus.
And where this motivation is coming from is also shifting. So we're seeing almost across the board that the pressures are coming from the market, coming from financiers, coming internally from customers, and coming from policy. And this is different to what we saw last year, where it was primarily coming from customers. But this holistic approach is driving you to be concerned and motivated to be able to do this implementation more effectively, more-- and faster.
What we're also hearing is that customers are using AI to supplement the skills gap, which makes a lot of sense, if you think back to the specialization of the analysis that we looked at earlier. If you think about, globally, the number of carbon footprints that need to be done on products, on buildings, on implementation of construction and the number of specialists who know how to do that, there's a significant gap. And that's where these automated technologies and advanced technologies are perfect for supplementing that skills gap.
And the other interesting aspect is, what are the primary actions that are being implemented? And across the board, we're seeing that customers are using AI to be more sustainable and that's jumped for architecture, engineering, construction for owners and for media and entertainment. This year, that is the primary action that we're hearing. And design and manufacturing, it is something, but it's the fifth in order of priority. So what that also tells us and what we know is that not all industry sectors are facing the same challenges at the same level and solving it in the same way.
So, for example, manufacturing is more focused, at this point, in increasing their investment of energy-efficiency processes and machinery. So their capital investments, how to make sure that they are meeting their sustainability requirements, having a look at their processes and design, and making sure that there's more recycled materials, and looking at the renewable energy sources that are going into their factories. So it's more-- a very practical applied approach, whereas what we're seeing from architects, engineers, and contractors is further along in terms of digital maturity, looking at AI.
But, as a team, to help our customers be able to operationalize and solve these problems at scale, where do we focus when the issue and the problem is immense? 40% of global carbon emissions come from the built environment and 35% of global waste comes from the built environment. And for most of our customers, that consistently means lowering carbon emissions, waste processes, looking at local procurement or more efficient procurement processes, and energy-efficient transport.
And as a team in the global solutions team, we've looked at a system of solutions. And a solution for us is thinking about what is the outcome that we're trying to achieve. And regardless of the product, regardless of the workflow, how do all of these things get stitched together so you can have what you need to be able to understand the issue, understand what is the value or cost to not solving that issue for your business, to understand what the requisite investment to solve that issue is, and then a roadmap for what those workflows are and to be able to implement that with your teams or with your suppliers and your supply chain?
And while there are sustainability considerations embedded into all of those solutions that we looked at, there are three specific solutions that are focused on solving our customers' sustainability challenges-- the operational carbon management, embodied carbon management, and renovation and adaptive reuse.
Operational carbon looks at the embodied-- operational carbon looks at the carbon emissions that are produced through the asset from energy through the life cycle of the building. Embodied carbon looks at the carbon that's embodied into the materials that are going into the building, whether in the initial construction phase or through the life cycle of the building and/or the asset. And renovation and adaptive reuse is thinking about how do we take that asset and not turn that into that 35% of waste? How can we use that asset for a different purpose? There's a famous quote about the most sustainable building is the building that was never built. So how can we look at the asset for different purposes to minimize the requirement for building something new.
And what we've put together is a comprehensive set of materials that help, firstly, understand what the challenge is and then understand what is the technology landscape to solve that. And how do all of these pieces fit together for the different types of organizations that are working to solve that problem? And how do the pieces all fit together in that puzzle? And then stepping out those stages into workflows for each of the-- identifying each of the tools and understanding what are the steps that are required and putting it together in a frame of how are you going to then take that forward to execute and implement within your organization.
So what I'm going to do is step through the three solutions that have been produced that are sustainability-focused to give you a flavor for the why, what, and the how.
Firstly, looking at operational carbon management. An operational carbon management looks at how to make decisions about the energy that's being used in the building based on the model and the design. Historically, this process has been quite linear and an architect has produced a design, which then goes off to a specialist to analyze, often to recreate a model and to do energy analysis, which is quite time-consuming. And it really reduces the ability to make rapid decisions.
So this solution is saying, well, how can we use that model to optimize for both engineers, but architects, and contractors, and owners to understand what the trade-offs are when they're making decisions around operational carbon. If they change something in the facade, increase the shading, it might reduce the energy demand. But what does that mean for other aspects of the building and not having to wait a significant period of time to get that information back to inform the design?
We've talked about a lot of these trends because they're holistically influencing why the market is concerned generally about sustainability. But if you have a look at this solution specifically, it does have a focus on helping our customers to reduce operational carbon, to meet and exceed the design requirements that they're hearing from industry, from their customers, or from certification and verification and to produce healthy environments.
And what is operational energy? Well, it looks at the energy sources that are-- a demand coming from a external energy sources-- solar heat gain, renewable energy on-site that might be reducing the energy demand, as well as the devices that are expected to be used within the building and what-- determining what that demand and that supply of energy is and how to appropriately plan to reduce that over time.
And we know is that energy use is significantly reduced based on the design influences-- such as the window-to-wall ratio, or the shading, or the materials-- and that there is a complex interrelationship in the work that the architects, and the engineers, and the contractors are doing and trying to assist to efficiently get that information out early to support the project teams across the board.
And the primary focus here is less on thinking just about one component and thinking about how does all of this fit together. And that's what the complex analysis enables us to do, to look at the variable aspects as well as look at the aspects that are more predicted, are more able to be directly predicted from the design. And this particular slide is really useful to be able to give you some of the ammunition you might need to influence some of your internal stakeholders about what is the research showing.
When we think about operational carbon, it isn't just in one particular phase but a lot of the design decisions that are made in pre-design or conceptual and schematic design will lock in decisions that will then yield the embodi-- the operational carbon emissions over the project life cycle. So maximizing the decisions early on is critical.
And the ideal energy assessment curve really happens at that concept and schematic. And the design development can further guide, but, conventionally, this isn't really done until later where those decisions, the cost, and the impacts are largely locked in.
And so there's lots of different aspects to managing and assessing operational carbon. And the intent of the solution is to bring all of those together to simplify something that is really quite complex and to build on industry standards using trusted solutions like the EnergyPlus solution, which is integrated into Revit.
Now, the technology landscape that's considered across the operational carbon implementation looks at those design phases and looks at what is the tool that is used there and then how does that tool interact with other tools. And this is another view of something of the same information and really highlighting that, as you can see, front and center with Autodesk Docs, that the data, and the data repository, and access to the data for this analysis is critical, whether it's for doing the upfront analysis from something like Autodesk Insight or if it's for integrating the specification-- construction specifications using something like AutoSpecs. Autodesk Docs is where all of that information comes together centrally.
What I'm going to do is just walk you through the stages and workflows. I'm only going to go to this level of detail for the operational carbon solution just because of the volume of material that we have, just-- and to show you what that looks like. For the other two solutions, I'm going to walk you through at a high level-- the initial phases, but not the stages and workflows.
So what we have in the detail is looking at each stage, and a video overview of that stage, and a step out of-- what are the key steps that occur during that stage. And this really helps for understanding, well, is your business involved at that stage? Is this a step that you would need to understand and get involved in? Or is it not relevant for your business? And also understand, well, what are your collaborators needing to think about either upstream or downstream in solving this problem?
And then for each of those stages and we look at the tasks-- steps out, well, what is the workflow that's involved in solving this problem? Where does the data come from? What is the analysis? How is that feedback then sent into the model, or into the report, or into the asset? So that is from a implementation perspective, the kind of level of granularity to support your understanding of what needs to happen at a high level and then to be able to support training and implementation to realize the value within your business.
And, as I said, I'm going to step through the other two solutions but at a higher level and not looking necessarily at those steps. So embodied carbon solution is to support our customers to reduce embodied carbon through integrated design, construction, and operational strategies-- facing largely the same industry trends, same pressures, looking at customers, financiers, industry pol-- government policy, and internal pressures as well.
if you think about what is embodied carbon, it's thinking about the carbon emissions that are produced in the creation of the physical object, and the installation of that object, and the maintenance of that object within an asset, and what happens to that across time. And different certification systems require different levels of depth in this analysis. So, for example, not all require the analysis to go through to understand what happens at end of life, but this is the full picture.
And so, typically, you look at the product phase, the construction phase, how is that used, and then what happens at the end. This is different to embedded carbon, which is also a thing. But embedded carbon are the carbon emissions that are saved through the life cycle. So, for example, for timber, there will be embedded carbon as that timber grows and sequesters carbon. It embeds carbon into that object, that material. And so when you're doing this kind of calculation where something like concrete might have a negative, something like timber might have a positive because of the embedded carbon it's bringing to the equation.
And if you look across the bottom here, it breaks out the percentage of where these carbon emissions are produced across the life cycle of the project. And what you would typically find is that, well, an absolute minimum is the A1 to 3 calculation, which really reflects 50% of the typical emissions across a project.
But considering that the operational emissions-- so B6 and B7 represent 23%. And the maintenance is 20%. Often there's quite a focus on the transport because it's very visible but the breakdown and the primary material contributors in that product phase and in the operations and maintenance phases.
And we know is that while-- when we started to do this, it was very expensive to do and it was very expensive to find alternative materials. It's now possible to find alternative materials that have a cost premium of less than 1%. And that's looking at concrete, insulation, rebar, finishing materials, and glazing. There is a significant potential to reduce carbon emissions. In the case of concrete, for example, 14% to 33% overall reduction in a building with next to no or a very low-cost premium.
What we know is that, obviously, not all assets, not all buildings are the same, but this reflects the change in industry, the change in the manufacturing processes, the evolution of new products that are driving these changes. And so while it may have been an expensive proposition to produce a low carbon design or building in the past, it is becoming less and less that case, particularly for some of the primary inputs, which are some of the primary inputs-- which are the most material contributors to the carbon emissions in a building, which would be, for example, the concrete and the steel in the structure. And if we think about what are the standard processes that you might do as part of a design in the clash avoidance, these processes as well can significantly reduce the volume of waste and wastage on site.
Again, what the researchers showed to support you having some of the information that you might need to support your internal business case and to think about, well, what is this solution supporting for the kinds of outcomes that your business needs to be focusing on and what you're hearing from your stakeholders.
And what are you finding at the moment within your businesses in trying to solve this? Because it's less and less a problem of trying just to get a low carbon outcome and more and more about, well, how can we do this in an efficient way because it is a requirement from our stakeholders? How can we do it in a way that's not so laborious but still at a high quality? How can we achieve the maximum potential and not lose some of that high potential value because you don't have the right information at the time or you don't have the right potential for collaboration in place?
How can you get the right information and analytics? What are the connectivity and compatibilities between systems that you need, whether that's created through data or through other means. How do you fill that knowledge gap that we talked about before and develop that experience rapidly within your business? And what is the impact if you aren't able to meet that market expectation, either from government compliance or otherwise.
And how complex is it for you to be able to scale the way you're doing it now? Is it viable to do that or is it required to think about doing it a different way?
And looking at all of the aspects here that are involved because it is a complex problem-- if it were simple, it would have been already solved. We're looking at making decisions about things that historically we just wouldn't have had that information in front of us. But now it's possible to do that.
And looking at that across the life cycle of the asset-- you do carbon emission assessments early on a design model. And rather than it being separated out and something that is only done at the end of the design or maybe once, maybe twice through that design process, how can that then be integrated into the design review process so you can understand early and quickly what has been a primary decision that's significantly impacting the emissions?
Through pre-construction you'd be-- and construction, you'd be looking at the as-built model. And then through the construction, commissioning, and handover, the handover model. So looking at different models through that and, likewise, the confidence and certainty that you're getting around the emissions that would be produced-- become more certain over time as well. In the handover where you're connected to a digital twin and understanding, well, what is the maintenance-- forward maintenance schedule? And once you've procured that piece of work-- commissioned the work and had that implemented-- what have been the emissions that were produced? So being able to track that over time, which is more and more important for corporate reporting as well.
So, again, looking at the technology landscape, we've got tools here that are designed for buildings and for infrastructure to solve particular aspects of carbon emission assessment at different stages. And then that comes together in a similar framework to the one we looked at before with operational carbon, which tools are used at which stages, and how are they brought together. And a lot of the focus on this looks at the tools that are integrated within our products but also with some of our strategic partners like EC3. Again, this landscape that looks at how does the analysis fit in with the data, where it's housed, and what are the primary tools and products that this analysis is being occurred-- in which this analysis is occurring.
And I'm not going to go through the workflows, but looking again at the structure of this solution, which looks at each of the stages, who the audience is that's impacted or influencing at that stage, and thinking about the entire life cycle. So, for example, how do we ensure that what has been designed is efficiently built? How do we make sure that construction specification is effectively brought in using AI to then be able to connect that to the model during the construction phase and to verify, using the data, that what was conceived was actually realized?
And then looking at the final solution, we've got the renovation and adaptive reuse solution. And these ideas about using existing buildings and existing infrastructure assets have been around for a while. The most sustainable building is the building that's never been built. But that is something that has historically been difficult to replicate and to roll out across an organization. So the intent with this solution is that provide-- the solution provides a blueprint to support that. And we know that this is increasingly a market need.
If we think about the LA Olympics, a big component of why LA won that bid was that they committed to minimize the construction of anything new-- no new stadia, the transport infrastructure getting an uplift rather than creating new transport infrastructure. And so how can we think about the existing built environment to extend its use rather than to create something new?
And this solution supports the evaluation of that. How can you determine whether it could be used for a renovation or it would need to be demolished? How can you determine whether what types of adaptive reuse are possible? And this is something that architects do frequently, but how can we make this more systematic to make it more scalable, to be able to do it faster, and to make it standard business practice rather than something that's special and bespoke? Again, the industry trends are consistent across all of these sustainability-focused solutions. And what the researchers are showing will support your business case for internal application of these solutions.
And this solution can help you in various ways. It can help with the reduction of carbon in your project and the reduction of carbon in all of the projects that you're producing across your portfolio to help meet your corporate objectives. It can also support the expansion and diversification of services to support new revenue or service lines and help meet certification requirements with efficiency.
And a key aspect of what makes a renovation and adaptive reuse challenging is the complex analysis to create informed decisions. So this solution is designed to provide that guide so you can have streamlined workflows and be able to implement sustainable project outcomes consistently.
This graphic, you probably may or you may have seen it before. It's-- it was produced in the UK to support infrastructure, an infrastructure study, and really goes back to that concept of doing nothing will yield the least carbon emissions-- or building nothing-- not doing nothing but building nothing-- and then building less, building clever, or building efficiently.
And our focus as an industry really has been, historically, more with the efficiency. How can we eliminate waste? How can we use new techniques? But this particular solution takes it back to its roots and saying, well, how could we build less? How could we build nothing and adapt what's currently there. Or to think about are there other ways to solve this problem?
Key components are looking at efficient resource use, energy efficiency, circular economy concepts, thinking about heritage and contemporary use. So how do you retain the heritage aspects for the asset? Longevity and sustainability sustainable material application. And then thinking about the adaptability assessments, which need to be thought and considered around internal space. How will this be used over time as the need evolves for the owner? And how can you meet that through an adaptable design?
This is talking about what some of those drivers are and that a lot of the current built environment does not meet the current requirements of the user group. And thinking about the locked in climate change impacts that are expected in terms of heat waves being extended-- more of them and longer-- the existing, particularly residential, assets, don't meet current requirements.
And then we've got some examples, like this particular hotel, that was produced in London, where we were-- where the design team was able to use a core-- the core and to build on top of that. Now, this isn't always going to be possible, but what is possible is the means to evaluate effectively whether that can be done.
So looking again at particular stages-- and this is largely the same as what we've seen with the other two solutions-- and thinking about how and what is done at each of those stages. Again, Autodesk comes together with you, and your teams, and your workflows, bringing the data into a central place where you can design and make.
We're looking at some of the case studies from customers who have implemented this, which can also support your business case internally or understand the implementation. Looking at some of the key products that are used in the application of this solution and how they fit together in the technology landscape.
So, yeah, I would like to thank you for taking the time to listen to this. I would encourage you to reach out to the teams you work with at Autodesk to find out about the solutions and to understand how they can help you and your business to implement and realize sustainability at scale within your business. Thank you.