What is believed to be the first online carbon emission calculator designed specifically for the UK construction industry has been launched.

The platform has been developed by NZC Solutions, a business founded in 2023 by Tim Reeve, a former technical director of top 20 British construction company Winvic. Mr Reeve has more than 30 years’ experience in the building sector.

NZC Solutions, which develops dedicated software innovations for the British construction industry, says the clear and simple, tailored calculator provides the most accurate and comprehensive analysis of emissions for carbon reporting ever made available to the domestic building sector.

Explaining how the cloud-hosted platform works, Mr Reeve said:

“Users enter basic information about factors such as product mixes and quantities, via straightforward means such as drop-down boxes. Each entry then links automatically to the material’s most reliable and robust emission data source, such as its Environmental Product Declaration (EPD).

“That document is part of our extensive construction datapoint library, containing only audited and verified real time carbon details about thousands of building products and materials. This facility is made possible by application programming interfaces, that allow varieties of software to communicate with each other easily.”

Mr Reeve said the calculator multiplied each quantity a user entered by its carbon factor index, from a source such as the EPD, and applied the appropriate conversion factor to provide an emission tonnage. At the end of the process, the calculator outputted a report containing a total emission number, expressed in the usual way as units of carbon dioxide equivalent.

He added: “The tool also offers users benefits such as customised workspace portals for hosting, saving and editing their carbon calculations. It additionally provides them with benchmarking data against industry standards, their own past performances, and the results of their key competitors.

“Moreover, the calculator offers users the options to send their completed carbon reports directly for expert, third-party verification – the documents’ format is ideal for this – and to access NZC Market Place, which contains details of manufacturers and suppliers offering low carbon solutions, including products and materials.”

Mr Reeve said NZC Solutions’ carbon calculator met all relevant legal and regulatory standards plus governance procedures and methods. These included the UK Green Building Council’s Net Zero Buildings Framework, the International Organisation for Standardisation’s ISO 14064 and the pilot version of the UK Net Zero Buildings Standard, launched last autumn.

He said: “The calculator also future-proofs users, as it aligns with version seven of the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method and updated Part Z Building Regulations, for example. Both these measures indicate how carbon calculation and disclosure expectations of construction sector businesses are now tightening regularly.”

The new calculator, which was nine months in development, can be accessed by subscribers to NZC Solutions’ Plus and Pro products.

NZC Plus is for main contractors, sub-contractors, manufacturers and suppliers wanting an accurate and comprehensive analysis of their organisations’ operational carbon footprints.

Operational emissions are those associated with completed buildings’ day-to-day running, including from the energy needed to power their heating, cooling, lighting and air conditioning systems.

NZC Pro is for main contractors and sub-contractors wanting to calculate emissions from their projects and works packages. It can generate carbon impact reports at both the as built and tender stages of a development.

Mr Reeve said: “The calculator avoids jargon and spares users the time, energy and frustration involved in tasks such as having to seek out individual product emission data and familiarise themselves with standards to which they should conform, as it does all this and more for them.

“The calculator, which was developed for construction professionals by construction professionals, overcomes problems such as the industry’s carbon reporting never having been fully accurate previously and earlier tools for logging and analysing emissions having been based on data from regions such as the EU, rather than the UK.”