Tekla Software Streamlines Your Embedded Carbon Workflows 

Tekla Software now includes a Carbon Calculator Tool. Find out how this built-in feature enables Tekla Structural Designer and Tekla Structures to streamline your team’s embedded carbon workflow while making their reporting more accurate and detailed. 

As the building industry comes to terms with climate change’s urgency, the pressure on structural engineers to reduce their buildings’ carbon footprints is mounting.  

Quantifying a structure’s embedded carbon is now an essential building design task. Increasingly, regulatory bodies around the world are requiring designers to estimate all emissions associated with a structure’s construction methods and materials.  

Many BuildingPoint Canada customers tell us they’re still getting up to speed on the most effective ways to calculate, evaluate, and report on a project’s embedded carbon. Early projects requiring this task can seem daunting without the right tools for the job. 

Tekla Carbon Calculator Tool 

Tekla’s Carbon Calculator Tool can simplify these tasks while helping your team report embodied carbon data more accurately. In this blog post, we’ll outline how Tekla Structural Designer and Tekla Structures support embodied carbon reporting workflows.

Design engineers specify roughly half of a building’s total embedded carbon values during design development. This would be Phase 3 in the Canadian Handbook of Practice for Architects (CHOP), for example, or Phase 2 of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Plan of Works (PoW): Concept Design.  

Since design development includes the lion’s share of these specification tasks, your team should make it a priority phase for sustainable design. It’s also the ideal project phase for your team to take advantage of Tekla Structural Designer. 

Using Tekla Structural Designer helps your team choose items like grid types, column layouts, load transfers and substructure. Its built-in Carbon Calculator Tool helps engineers make structural designs more efficient, cost-effective and sustainable. 

The Carbon Calculator Tool takes center stage when engineers evaluate material supply, transport, and manufacturing options. It helps engineers consider embedded carbon values just as they currently assess time, cost and quality implications. The result is better and greener design choices. 

Once stakeholders have decided on a building’s structure, the Building Information Model (BIM) will require more detailed specifications. Using Trimble’s structural modeling software, Tekla Structures, detailers can flesh out your building specifications. 

Embedded Carbon Calculations for Thousands of Small Parts 

In a steel-frame building, for example, these can include individual connections, welds, plates, and bolts. Detailers can work out the embedded carbon values for every one of the thousands of small parts, as needed. 

Other contractors and trades contribute additional design information at this stage, such as mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) fixtures, cladding, fire safety equipment, and utilities. All these additional details have embedded carbon values to incorporate. 

The best way to account for all these other elements is to continually update your embedded carbon analysis as you progress. Tekla Structures goes beyond the preliminary estimates from Tekla Structural Designer to fill in the details on the fly, producing a constructible, as-built structural model.

As with other deliverables, the more accurate your team’s BIM is, the more accurate its embedded carbon reports will be. Tekla Structures has the functionality to match your BIM’s level of detail to your team’s level of need. 

You also may need to reconcile embodied carbon values produced from multiple applications.
Trimble has collaborated with the developers of OneClick to seamlessly integrate their application with Tekla Structures. Combining these tools enables your environmental specialists to view and generate carbon reports using the detailed BIM your team has created.

As the structure moves through the remaining steps in the building lifecycle, other standard applications become available. For example, OneClick LCA can project building lifecycle factors like thermal efficiency, building usage, operational carbon emissions, maintenance, refurbishment, and demolition. Engineers can also refer to IStructE to find related spreadsheets and reference materials like embedded carbon calculation guides.  

Carbon Lifecycle – A Crucial Concept 

The carbon lifecycle is now a crucial concept in sustainable building practices throughout the world. Trimble’s Tekla suite of products makes it easier to calculate embedded carbon values and optimize workflows for sustainable building practices.  

 BuildingPoint Canada is proud to offer and support these products to help your team and stakeholders apply embedded carbon concepts and become part of the transition to a more sustainable built environment.

Why not call BuildingPoint Canada today to discuss how you can streamline your embedded carbon workflows while producing more accurate embedded carbon reports for all your new buildings?