Empowering estimators to calculate embodied carbon in their projects

Conceptual dashboard for Embodied Carbon in Pre-Construction

Overview

Role:

Senior UX Designer

Timeline:

Aug 2023 to Feb 2025

Outcome:

Public Beta

Carbon Roadmap

Introduction

At the end of 2023, I had the opportunity to join the newly formed Sustainability in Construction team for the Autodesk Construction Cloud product suite. This team was to address the growing need of construction-phase customers to estimate and track embodied carbon in their projects. Thus, the project, Carbon Accounting in Takeoff (CAT 🐱), was born.

Specifically, our team worked on an integrated pre-construction embodied carbon accounting experience within Autodesk Takeoff, a 2D and 3D quantification tool. Along the way, we continued to discover the needs of our customers, validated our concepts, developed a go-to-market strategy, and ultimately built out a sustainability vision that went beyond this project.

Background Knowledge

Construction is a complicated topic, so let’s set some context!

What is Pre-Construction?

Construction can be divided into phases: pre-construction, construction and post-construction. We’re interested in the pre-construction phase.

In this stage, planning, coordination and preparation takes place before any of the actual construction work begins. During this phase, the project owner, general contractor, architects, and engineers, collaborate to define the project scope, objectives, and design.

What is a General Contractor?

The general contractor (GC), is responsible for overseeing the construction of a project from start to finish. They act as the primary point of contact between the project owner and the various trades, subcontractors, and suppliers involved. They ensure that the construction project is completed on time, within budget, and to the required quality and safety standards.

During pre-construction, GCs review the specifications, drawings, and project requirements with the owner and architect during a constructibility review.

Our Problem Space

As sustainability becomes an increasingly important factor in construction projects due to company ESG goals and regulatory compliance, companies have started to incorporate steps to calculate their projects’ carbon impact, or embodied carbon (EC).

"This past year has sort of been the year where we're starting to see more requests from our clients asking for the calculation of carbon specifically looking at materials and calculating emissions associated with their materials." - General Contractor Customer