Development and Implementation of a Lifecycle Carbon Tool for Highway Maintenance

AbstractThe highway maintenance sector within the United Kingdom consumes considerable amounts of natural resources and accounts for a large amount of carbon emissions. Carbon emissions reduction is now considered an integral part of tender selection criteria and project performance issue by highway clients. This requires contractors to be able to assess and reduce both direct and indirect emissions associated with highway maintenance. This presents a challenge for the sector as despite the availability of methods to assess carbon there are no routine tools to allow a lifecycle assessment (LCA) approach to carbon reduction as part of ongoing maintenance management. Thus, there is a need for a consistent, project-focused carbon assessment tool, underpinned by a robust LCA methodology that can assess emissions and emissions reduction across core highway maintenance processes. This paper describes the development and business implementation of such a tool based on the Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 2...

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