Drive Sustainability into Your Project as Early as Possible, Even with Little Information

CHRISTELLE CHICHIGNOUD: Hello, everyone. Welcome to this conference named "Drive sustainability into your project as early as possible." We are here in Autodesk 2024 editions. I'm Christelle Chichignoud. I'm vice president for SYSTRA Group, an engineering company dedicated for transport solutions and mobility. And I will animate this conference with my colleague Zohra Mezhour.

ZOHRA MEZHOUR: Hello, everyone. I'm Zohra Mezhour. I'm a decarbonization and mobility engineer, and I work within the same department as Christelle. This is the group sustainability department, and we're really pleased to animate this session together.

CHRISTELLE CHICHIGNOUD: So just before we start, who are we at SYSTRA just in few words, I promise. So SYSTRA is an engineering company. We are in 80 countries. And we are a global leader for transportation solutions and mobility.

What does it mean? It means we do planifications and consultancy. We design and support the construction for infrastructure project, for instance. And we also follow the operations and the maintenance for railway, high-speed line, metro line, highways, bridges, and tunnels, for instance.

So we cannot say any more today, to be honest, that an infrastructure is sustainable just because it's an infrastructure or just because it is a public line transportations. This is not enough. This is not enough anymore.

So to evaluate if an infrastructure is sustainable, we have to integrate the benefits for the communities, the access to services, to health, to education, for instance, but also all the environmental impacts for an infrastructure in operations, but also in the way we will build-- deliver this infrastructure project.

Sustainability became a part of the component of each infrastructure project in the way of public but also private sector plan, design, or finance it.

What probably changed the most during the last years, it is the part of the environment in the sustainability strategy. And more precisely, I would say that after the COVID period, there was real accelerations for the way we have to integrate and anticipate the climate change consequences for infrastructure projects.

What does it mean? Well, we need to take into account different topics, several topics. We need to deal with the positive impact for communities. We need to increase the quality, the accessibility of mobility services. But in the meantime, we also have to deal with scarcity of natural resources. We have to integrate the consequences of extreme weather events, for instance. And of course, now, low carbon is a key driver on the project.

We are not dreamer in the meantime, so it means that we have to think about all these topic, and in the meantime, to deal with cost and performance for infrastructure. Sustainability is a common responsibility. It's a challenge. But I would say also it's a opportunity. The earlier you could anticipate we integrate the sustainability in an infrastructure project, the greater could be our ability to influence and have a long-term impact.

Of course, as I said, sustainability, it's a lot of topics. It means a lot of challenge inside the challenge. So today-- [COUGHS] sorry. We will focus on the climate challenges because we only have a full day to discuss about this topic. So we will focus, we make a choice to choose the climate challenges.

And I would say more precisely that we will focus on the easiest topic. But in the meantime, it's probably the more complex to address because we have to think about it in a different mindset if we want to have a long-term vision and results. This is the carbon footprint, the carbon optimizations.

So during this conference, we will share with you our story, our project feedbacks, how we identify challenges with Zohra, with my teams, with other teams inside SYSTRA, and how we try to put technical solutions and collaborative team works to address these challenges.

So just a quick overview of the agenda of this conference. First, we will try to explain all the context of the complexity of a carbon assessment and the challenges we have with it for transport projects. It's something very specific. We will share with you a short demonstrations of our digital solutions and how for us it is an answer to a part of the climate challenges.

And we will share with you our brainstorming and how we would like to go one step further to precise not only for design or detailed design, how we can influence and optimize the carbon footprint, but how we need to anticipate and so to include in the early stage of the project these considerations.

Of course, we will share with you a few elements of the output so that we can just illustrate how we would like to have a final path on it.

So just to launch everything, I would like to share with you questions. Do you know that the global contribution of the transportations and construction sector is something like roughly a third of the impact? So it means that the constructions and the transport industry has a key role to play to reduce, to minimize the impact on the climate challenges and the carbon footprint.

Just keep it in mind that, for instance, for the constructions, it represents 9%. For the transport, it's 21%. So it's almost, for both of you, it's almost a third of global CO2 emissions for the world during one year. It's pretty huge, as you can imagine.

So it means that for us as engineering dedicated to public transportation and mobility, we have identified this as the first step of our challenges. And we know we can have an influence. We have a role to play because of our missions for plan, design, and also following the constructions.

So all this sector represents for us the basis of our field. The first step to start if we want to reduce the carbon emissions.

Of course, we do not do this just because we said, hey, this is a nice idea. No. We do it because we have a global context and international context. Very pushy with the actions for reducing the carbon emissions.

You have probably heard about the Paris Agreement and the common goal for 2050 for carbon neutrality. Of course, in Europe, we also have a target. It depends of the country, but we need to reduce like 50% our emissions. So everything, you can find it inside the sustainable development goal. UNSDG. Of course, you know them probably.

But this is the context. So it means that internationally, we have this move that push to act, to reduce the impact and the consequences of climate challenges. And the first step is the action to reduce the carbon emissions.

As just explained with the transportation and building sector, there are two major actors on this, so we can influence it. But who and what can we do when we are an engineering company to reduce and to influence this reduction of carbon emissions? Which is a good question Zohra note.

So we can act in several parts. First, we can avoid these emissions. It will be strongly connected with the nature of an infrastructure project. And because we are in engineering, we can influence the way we will deliver, we will build a project. So it means that we can reduce the carbon footprint. Keep it in mind. This is absolutely key in the rest of our demonstrations.

Of course, there is other way to influence the reduction of carbon footprint. We can focus on energy transitions, the way we can influence the green energy. We can use it, we can produce it. So it is very important in the part of the public transportation or in the decarbonization, for instance.

And then we can go one step further with the optimization of energy efficiency. Not only for infrastructure, but also for technical project of infrastructure.

So the last part, the flame improve. We can improve. It means that it is an effort for all the value chains. We can have very specific things to push, to go one step further for decarbonization.

For us, from our point of view, when we start to think about how we can influence and have a positive impact of the carbon reductions thanks to our missions for infrastructure projects, it means that for us, we started to talk about sustainable design and construction for transport systems. So it is a global approach. We need a global approach.

So this is the beginning. And it seems too very easy when we try to explain like this, but I'm not sure it was so easy. So I'll Zohra to do the explanation what is not so easy.

ZOHRA MEZHOUR: Yes. Well, this is sometimes easily said than done. And based on our experience, it turns out that assessing the carbon impact of transport projects is really complex. It is much more difficult, in fact, to do the carbon assessment exercise for infrastructure compared to a typical building project. And this was also a very first challenge for us as an engineering company when we wanted to explain this to our teams and our clients.

So let me share with you some examples on the carbon impact of some typical project, and hopefully you'll get to see where we stand. So here we have, for instance, a commercial building of more than 6,000 square meters, and it emits around 6,000 tons of CO2. That is equivalent to the yearly carbon emissions emitted by 1,200 people.

Similarly, we did this carbon calculation of four typical assets that we encounter in our transport project. A tunnel, for instance. We have one kilometer, and it emits around 20,000 tons of CO2, and a little bit more for one kilometer viaduct.

These numbers are only for one kilometer, and the impact, as shown here, is three times more than that of a building. And let me tell you, and believe me, in our transport project that we work on every day, we have hundreds of kilometers to deal with, to design, and build. So the impact is very huge.

Now, the issue we have is, despite this big difference in terms of impact, if we look into what the industry provides in terms of methodologies and solutions, doing the carbon assessment is less common, and there are very few solutions out there that support doing this exercise.

The building sector is, however, on the other side, much more advanced in this regard, and there are several tools in the market.

We could ask ourselves, what can explain this slow development. Well, no surprise, transport infrastructure projects are more complex, even for BIM. You would have noticed too that BIM deployment has gone fast for the building sector for the last few years, whilst for infrastructure, it is still ongoing.

A reason for that is in fact that there is no typical-- we can't find a typical transport project that we can implement anywhere. We never have similar or standardized assets. And also we add another layer of complexity. We have also many more, a lot of disciplines involved.

Honestly, we've come to this conclusion in 2020 when we started to look at practical ways to assess the carbon footprint. It was very frustrating for us at the beginning, but then it sounded more like an opportunity.

And it was the case since we were able to develop Carbontracker, a digital solution by SYSTRA that is specifically relevant to the transport infrastructure project and in which we embedded our 60-plus years of experience. We'll talk a little bit more about this solution, I promise. But first, let's maybe have a quick overview of what is the carbon management approach. It is a methodology that is deeply integrated within our solution.

So what is the carbon management approach? The carbon management approach consists in fact of doing a life cycle assessment of carbon, meaning when we want to assess the carbon impact of a project, we need to look at it through its whole life cycle and consider every life cycle stage.

From the stage of extracting the materials, to their manufacturing process within the factory, to their transport to the construction site. All what is happening in terms of work on site, because to build our asset, we need to use energy, equipment, drilling, placing, et cetera. So this emits carbon for sure.

Once we build our asset or our project, it's not there for show. It has to be used. So we need to operate it. For instance, for a rail line, we need to use energy for the fleet, for the stations. But also, it's very important to maintain it, to take into account the impact of replacement for short-life materials as well as other impacts we may have during the operation and maintenance phase.

And then at the end, we should not forget about the end of life of our project. It's true. Typically, a transport project is designed for 100 years, and it looks so far if we compare it to a building project that is designed for 50 years of life. But in our case, a transport project also needs to be considered at its end of life, because at that moment we need to demolish some of our assets. We need to recycle some items, reuse them, deposit materials, et cetera.

So it's very important to have this life cycle approach and to consider it when we want to assess the carbon impact.

And there are emission factors that we can find for each of these stages. But if we consider the amount of assets we have in a typical, let's say, infrastructure project, we have many assets, many elements to deal with. And applying this methodology can be quite complex to do it manually or to rely on a simple-- it won't be it won't look simple-- simple Excel sheet.

That's why, again, we looked into a solution for our teams to help them do the carbon assessment. And it led to the development of Carbontracker and not classic way to do the carbon assessment.

Now, I think it would be very curious to know what is Carbontracker. So I will take some time to present it to you briefly. So Carbontracker is our in-house digital solution. It's a web application that SYSTRA has developed and that is compatible with BIM. But not only we can still integrate bill of quantities through Excel file as well as other types of file formats. We'll talk about this a bit later.

But the idea is to allow the assessment as the design evolves. We can't just wait to get a BIM model before we do the assessment. If we have some data before, we can still use it.

The application allows to first measure the carbon footprint, because we need to start somewhere if you want to optimize. Then manage and control the carbon emissions at every stage of the life cycle of the transport project. I say it again, it's for every stage. That is very much connected to the life cycle approach that we introduced just a few minutes earlier.

So what can we do with Carbontracker? First, we can quantify in real time the carbon footprint as well as the avoided emissions. We can also measure those emissions for different assets and design scenarios. The solution is very powerful. It allows users and designers to identify the hotspots across the life cycle.

And once they are able to identify the hotspots, they can propose alternative that target those specific hotspots or carbon hotspots. So they know which component, which asset emits the most or drives the whole impact, and they can propose tailored strategies to reduce the carbon footprint.

So we can run several sensitivity tests. And this allows to measure the progress and to monitor the progress towards the global carbon reduction goals or targets that we've set for the project and beyond.

Because we have several opportunities with the tool, this definitely helps our clients make the right decisions at the right time and to identify what is relevant, what is not, what is compatible with reality, with the design practices, with the industry practices as well, et cetera. So very useful for our teams and our clients.

This is all good. But actually, how does it work on the tool? So the tracking of the carbon footprint within the tool is done via three steps. First, we need to configure the tool to suit the project characteristics and local context. Second, we integrate the models, the files that we have, the project data that is available. And last, we can visualize the results to monitor the carbon performance from concept design to infrastructure delivery.

I guess you may all be curious right now to see the tool, so I won't keep you waiting too long. We'll do a demonstration of Carbontracker to show you how it works. Because we don't have much time, we'll just focus on some specific aspects on the tool. Typically, the BIM model integration. It's such a great feature that we have that is not yet developed as much in the market right now. So we'll take some time to show you how it works.

This is the interface of Carbontracker that we're showing here. Like I said, it's a web application that is hosted within the internal servers of SYSTRA. We have here the three steps we talked about earlier-- the configuration, which is about configuring the project to the local context and characteristics, then input data where we put our files and models, and last, we can visualize the results.

So this is the homepage of the tool. Here, we implemented it on several projects, but for today's demonstration, we'll focus on using-- we'll rely on the railway demo project to showcase how we can first integrate BIM models into the tool as well as we can also spend some time on and seeing the results and how they are analyzed within the tool.

So for the BIM model integration, we just have to have your BIM model file ready. For this case, we have an IFC file that we just drag and drop into the box that we have here. So our tool is processing the model. And just as a reminder, I want to tell you that we can also use Excel files. We can also use other types, like JSON or CAD files. We have several types of format that can be processed within the tool. A long list, believe me.

Now our BIM file is being processed on the right side. Once it is ready to view, it moves to the left side. The idea, again, is to accompany the evolution of design. This is the same file as the one that we're going to use today. So I'm just going to open it right now, because we don't have much time to wait for the other one.

So our BIM model is opened via Forge, which is an Autodesk solution. Well, no surprise for me, the model is that of a railway viaduct. You see this beautiful viaduct, colorful one here. And before we extract all the data from that model, our very first important step is to analyze it, to check if we have all the properties that are necessary for the assessment.

So we click on Apply, and the quality check is done automatically. The importance of this step is that we ensure that we have results that are coherent with our input data. So whatever is validated shows up in green, meaning that all the properties are there. Blue elements also appear in case if we have a missing property in the model. And this allows us, again, to go back and rectify and check if the errors are really important or no. So we have to fix them.

Sometimes, some element shows up in red. In that case, we know that we haven't done our job properly because we don't have any property that can be used for the carbon assessment. This view is pretty useful for our teams because for instance, for this blue element, we can just click on this object error and we know where does the error come from.

This view is also a very important feature. Compared to a big Excel file, we don't know actually what is being computed. If we have any errors, we can't visualize it. Here, we can see everything. And once we're satisfied with our analysis, for instance, we don't want to consider the blue elements right now. Our BIM modeler is correcting this error. We can just go forward and do the analysis and update it afterwards once we get our updated file.

So here we export all the quantity data from the BIM model. And the calculation is done automatically within the tool, and we can visualize the results. We have a first view of the results through the cockpit. This is our global view of the carbon performance of the project. We have the global results. We see, for instance, how much we have emitted compared to our initial baseline. Almost 18% reduction.

Then we have our breakdown by life cycle stage from the extraction of materials, their transport to the site, operation and maintenance, end of life. Every step is detailed there on this table, but as well as on the pie chart next to it. And we have also this breakdown by asset type. So we can see the impact for the box structures, for the other types of asset, for the embankment, for the cut in, and for the viaduct.

For instance, in this case, you can view dynamic change of this graph based on the asset that we chose. So for viaduct, we have 88% coming only from the production of the materials and the components. So this gives us an idea of where does the emission come from.

But we have also this time frame at the very top that allows us to choose a specific time on our project to see how the carbon impact evolves. This is pretty useful when we want to see the evolution of the impact of operation phase. We consume energy over time. The replacement, the maintenance, these parameters don't happen one shot at a certain time, but over the life period of the project. In this case, it was 120 years.

If we want to go deeper into the project results, we have a project analysis display. And we see a beautiful donut chart. A colorful one again. And we see the breakdown of the carbon impact all over the life cycle of the project. But we can also choose a specific life cycle stage that we could be interested in to look further into it. We have also again, this small timeline. Same to view the evolution of the impact over time.

So now if I go back to my beautiful donut, other than the global impact, for instance, here, viaducts represent 20% of the impact. And this specific one is 4% of the impact. If I want to know further about it, I just click on it, and I can have zoom into its structure.

So steel represents 80% of the impact, for instance, for this viaduct, and it is driven a lot by the plate girder. So our designers can think, if this plate girder is identified as a hotspot, they can think of optimization alternatives, either low carbon material or even change the whole design or propose other strategies.

And all these strategies can be tested within the tool. We can create several scenarios. We have the possibility to analyze, to compare side by side the results through this comparison tool. We just activate it.

For our demonstration, we have an alternative where we implemented low carbon design for the whole project-- low carbon concrete for the whole project. So this is what is showing on the right side. So both donuts, beautiful ones, are displayed here, and we can do the same analysis, zoom, whatever to go deep to confirm if we have actually saved carbon or not. Yeah.

CHRISTELLE CHICHIGNOUD: Well, thank you, Zohra, for these demonstrations. I like the donuts, so thank you. So what is very important with this demonstration-- I just want to highlight that we make it possible for any engineers involved in the project to act and to visualize the carbon footprint, the hotspot for his or her specialties. So for us, it's very important.

One of the challenge for us is to be sure that sustainability could be shared by anyone in the project. It's not only the responsibility for sustainability specialist or carbon specialist. With this digital solution, we would like to be sure that every speciality, every engineers could see, visualize the effect of the projections for the carbon footprint.

So it means that when we start to develop and to apply Carbontracker on our project, we were really focused on the design and the detailed design. We need a lot of information, as you can imagine and as you could see with Zohra's demonstrations. A lot of informations by assets to put the connections with the carbon footprint. It means that for us, we realize a carbon baseline based on our experience of more than 20 years of projects. So it's important to see these connections.

And as I explained in introductions, we could see that there is an acceleration, the global context. And we can see that our clients need to anticipate.

In the meantime, few years ago, we still have a question. We started to have question from the investor from the financial institutions. They started to ask us if we can provide information to illustrate the carbon footprint avoided. Carbon footprint avoided, is it exactly why we develop Carbontracker so that we can identify and optimize the carbon footprint so that we can see the result with carbon avoided.

So it's good. But when you have information, when your project is on progress, when you already have a track, when you already have enough information for the board of quantity, for instance. So we started to feel that our clients' needs to have some information at the early stages so that they could better anticipate the investments and they could have all information to take decisions the earlier they can do it.

So for us to say, yes, I can see an opportunity. So let's work together with my team, with the BIM teams to see how we can adapt to this challenge. We say, oh, it will be very interesting to see how we can anticipate.

And then this is the first issue. Yes, we can anticipate, but we need precise data to anticipate. So how can we do this? So I remember with Zohra, very intense discussions. I remember it. And so many workshops with our different teams because we need to anticipate but with very few data.

ZOHRA MEZHOUR: Yeah, you're right. Well, our tool is very powerful, it's useful, it's detailed. But when we are at early stages, we face this challenge of not having enough quantitative data. Not as precise. We don't have models. We don't have plans. We have very, very few data, if not no data for some specific aspects of the project.

And if we insisted on using our tool in our current format, well, we'll be saying we don't have data, we're stuck, we can't move forward. And I find that a bit unfortunate.

So what we did is shift our way of thinking. And we were like, let's think about it again. We should have some data. And at the end, this turns out to be true, because in early stages, we actually have data. For sure, not within the same amount, nor the same format as before. So let's take it and try to do something with it.

And if our tool cannot be used as such right now, then something we can do is maybe develop a new calculation module that helps us do this carbon assessment based on the type of the data and the amount of data we can get.

So we were very motivated. We are motivated. We had the right mindset. And we started looking into what we can do.

Well, we were challenged. But despite that, we told ourselves, let's start easy and slow. Let's first identify what data do we have at early stage. And to do so, we just have to look at the types of projects we work on. We have that information. We thought it would be easy for us.

At SYSTRA, we work as project managers, consultants, or designers on different types of projects such as railways, high-speed lines, tramways, metros, et cetera. Several types of projects. So we started to look at all these types of projects at once. And we had a small team, like Christelle mentioned earlier. And at the very beginning, everyone was looking at everything at the same time, and that revealed itself to be very challenging. It was no easy job.

So we told ourselves maybe we need to be a bit more pragmatic. So instead of having this mixed approach where we look at everything at the same time, let's maybe build this approach little by little.

So the idea we had is to focus on one type of transport systems. And then once we're good, we can move on to the second one that is closer to it. And so we can build up on the similarities that they may have. And for sure we'll have to consider any specificities when they are applicable.

So for instance, we started looking at a typical high-speed line in order to define the data that we need, and then moved on to the conventional rail, which is a bit similar if we look into the infrastructure part. Operation, we agree, it's very, very different.

But again, we get back to the question, how do we get the data. Well, we can't zoom into the project or we'll be incoherent with what we have in early stage. Adopting a high-level approach was more of a solution to us. Concretely, what does it mean?

For example, we have this image of a high-speed line project. What could be the parameter or dimension that strikes right away and stands out the most? Well, if we look at it, no one could deny that it is the length of that railway line. So it's a parameter that we cannot miss, and it has to be integrated for the carbon footprint assessment. That was one way to do this data identification.

Another way or another idea we had is to look into what we usually do at early stages of a project. Well, we estimate costs. When you think about it again, you'll be like, how we can estimate cost that early? There should be data that allows us to do so. And carbon impact is also a different kind of cost where we don't feel it directly in our pockets as paying money or tax. But we bear it somehow in a different way, indirectly.

So based on that, we could identify data as well as assumptions that we can make good use of for our exercise.

Well, we did all this brainstorming, research, et cetera. We took it step by step. But again, if we go back to the complexity of a transport system, we're not a team of experts in every discipline and every transport type. So we had to connect and reach out to our experts and ask for help, because discussing with them would always help us to first cross-check the information we have but also refine our approach.

So we reached out to our expert, and there was a wide variety of them. We had, like Christelle mentioned, some dedicated workshops together to build the right assumptions and also untie those technical knots. It was informative for us. We did learn a lot.

However, on the other hand, usually when we reached out to a specific expert of one discipline, they know so much about their own specific topic, and we can talk a lot, hours, if not days about it. And they'll be talking, sharing experience of their project. We had this case, we had this other case, be careful about this and that.

And when we try to ask them, can you maybe make it more high level, maybe not the engineer way, but more of a non-specialist-- try to explain it to a non-specialist or a beginner, even, or a [INAUDIBLE] to help us identify this parameter? What?

CHRISTELLE CHICHIGNOUD: It was really-- I remember, Zohra. It was very strange for them. So I started to say, hey, this is a cultural shake for you. I think so. This is really the picture. Zohra chose the picture, I have to say. But this is really the reaction most of the time we had during the different workshops. So there is something we just have to keep in mind.

We asked our experts to do estimations. That's their daily life, of course, but we asked them to make the connections with the carbon footprint by taking into account hypothesis they used to take it when we are in detailed design. So here, we ask them to do hypothesis at the early stage but without all the information.

So there is a risk. There is things that we unknown, so we have to take hypothesis and so on. So it was not an unusual way to work for them. And once again, this is not the case to do hypothesis. What is difficult is to make the connections with the carbon footprint and take hypothesis. But usually they just take when we are at the very detailed stage for design. So it was something very new, really.

But in the meantime, what I like is that it's an intellectual challenge, so everybody take it just like that. It's an intellectual challenge. And that's the way we started to collaborate, to work together. Even if it was a cultural shake, they did their best to answer our questions and to provide elements. So it is something that quite innovative in the approach for them, for us. And at the end, we explore something all together. We build something all together.

ZOHRA MEZHOUR: Yeah, it was all worth it at the end because we successfully, let's say, got our data and our assumptions. But again, if I go back to my example of the rail line, so we have our length, but we can still tell what is the whole carbon impact of that railway line. There is one value ratio that is missing, which is the carbon impact of a typical one kilometer line.

Because we discussed with our experts and they shared many projects, so we were like, yeah, we have a mine of information here. We can just capitalize on this, and it's going to be OK. We have many projects. We are experts. We can get our ratios.

Well, again, does it look simple? Well, no. It's another ride we had to take. So capitalizing our data was also a bit of a challenging process too, because at the end, we want to build a carbon ratio database. So we had to look at different options we had.

So historically, but also currently, we did and still have some carbon assessments for projects that either still use the classical methods, the Excel sheet, or a different means requested by the client, for instance. And also, many projects have implemented our current version of Carbontracker. So we took all that information that was provided from those past and current projects to get our ratios.

Then another option we had, which is more of a complementary job, is to rely on our BIM for project. In SYSTRA, we've done BIM where we've deployed BIM for 10-plus years. So many projects even who don't have carbon assessment, for which we didn't do it, they have BIM models.

So we told ourselves we can still capitalize on this to get our ratios. And how? What better option we have to do this carbon assessment? Well, we have our tool, Carbontracker, that can help us do so. And it has also a very powerful and extensive database. So we just have to use it to get our data.

So based on these two options, we were able to build our carbon ratio database. But we still have to specify some parameters for the projects, typically the geographical context, because if we build a railway line in Europe, it's not the same as if we do it in the US or in Asia or anywhere else in the world. So we had to specify that.

And again, in addition to relying on our in-house expertise, we were also open towards what is and has been done elsewhere. We tried to look at what is available and what was shared by the literature and the research and development in order to take the best out of it and enhance our approach.

So now we have our parameters on one hand, and we have our ratios on the other hand. But how do we make them connect? How do we marry them to have our little carbon calculation module explicitly-- what output do we want to have from the tool? How do we do the calculation?

Well, grab your seats again. That was also a very, very big question and a challenging one. It required time and energy for us. And again, what we told ourselves is let's not make it complicated, difficult. Let's try to simplify this process. So we get some concrete results that would be helpful.

So what did we propose? Well, we connected our approach to the evolution of the project design. We proposed different calculation options, either by project, by asset, or by component. So calculation can be done by project. When we are at very, very early stage of projects, we will rely on high level, a few key parametrics that mainly depend on the type of the project that we are working on.

Second, when we have evolved in terms of design, we are at preliminary stage, we can use the asset approach. During this time of design, we actually have some data on each asset, so we can rely on this calculation module where we specify the calculation, for instance, for a bridge, a typical bridge, a tunnel, station, et cetera.

And then last, by components, this arrives at a later stages of design, a detailed design stage, typically relying on our current solution, Carbontracker, that is already powerful and can be used right away by our teams.

Because we know that precision and the data we get over time is not precise, that it will be updated over time, et cetera, we also propose to associate a confidence ratio to the calculation, to the calculated result that makes it less risky or less uncomfortable for our designers. So they have the results, but they have this insurance right next to them, so they're fine with it.

So all of this is ongoing as we're speaking right now. It's for us a research and development process. And we hope we can deliver this version soon to our teams and clients.

CHRISTELLE CHICHIGNOUD: Yes, thank you, Zohra. I think that there is a key word in what you explain. It's "collaborations." The collaborations between the different experts, the collaboration between the different technical teams so that we can build together something that makes sense, makes sense for our project, for our business, for our clients.

So it means that these collaborations, it's not only a matter for an engineering company. We are not the only one. It will make sense only if we could have a common goal shared with all the value chains. It means that with this, we really need to be sure that the public and private sectors, our clients, the constructors, the subcontractors and partners, everybody could be involved in the same goal, the way we can reduce and optimize the carbon footprint for infrastructure projects.

It starts with the identification of the common goal. But we also need to have common KPIs, evidences. We need to be sure we can evaluate at each step of the value chain the efforts, the added value, the results. So we need a team dedicated for analysis on the projects and so on.

So it is something that makes sense, that will make sense to integrate sustainability as earlier as we could in the infrastructure project only if we can involve all the value chains, only if all the value chains takes the responsibility for each part to do the best and to build something together.

So the final word, of course you understand sustainability at the early stage of infrastructure project. It's challenging. And we have challenges inside the challenge. But this is really exciting and a real opportunity. So let's do it all together. Let's build it together to be sure we could have a positive impact for communities and in the long-term visions.

Well, this is the end. I stop here. I hope that you appreciate this conference. If you got questions or remarks, you can put them in the comment box here. If you like this class, please just click on them. You know what it is. You can also bookmark the class to find it again or later or share it with other people.

I just want to say thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much for my co-speaker. And she is absolutely key in the way we can develop this digital solution. So thank you, Zohra.

ZOHRA MEZHOUR: Thank you, Christelle.

CHRISTELLE CHICHIGNOUD: And I hope that we can keep in touch all together to discuss after this conference during Autodesk University. Thank you very much. Goodbye.

ZOHRA MEZHOUR: Thank you. Bye.