In pursuit of a building embodied carbon estimate, I would like to provide general contractors with a spreadsheet which indicates the level of detail that they need to provide quantities for within each material/assembly. I am looking for a formal or informal industry-standard which includes the level of granularity recommended in material quantity collection for building embodied carbon estimation. For example, what are all the categories recommended for inclusion in the curtainwall assembly? Does this type of spreadsheet or tool exist?
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This is a great question, and one we been thinking through related to material quantity reporting for state procurement policies. Have you checked out the Projects component of the EC3 tool? That part of the tool is set up to address that question, as it is a place for entering and tracking material quantities with data like:
- Assembly/Subassembly by Uniformat or Masterformat category
- Component name
- Quantity and Unit (e.g. 1 yd3 of concrete or 1 lb of steel rebar)
- EPD
You could also check out Appendix B of the Buy Clean Washington Study to see an older example of a structural material quantity reporting template.
Hello Hannah,
I use the One Click LCA template. It is available to anyone, you don’t need to have a license to access this spreadsheet.
It will depend for which software you will use the data for. For WBLCA: Tally you will need your takeoffs from a Revit File, One Click LCA allows you to have the data in a spreadsheet, and Athena does too.
For A1-A3 embodied carbon analysis of materials, if you use the EC3 Tool, it will allow you to upload a spreadsheet (I am not sure if they have any specific template you need to use).
There are EPDs curtainwall systems that will not require you to break down the assembly.
Take a look at the resource and let me know if you have any further questions.
Best,
Victoria
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Hi Hanna,
As indicated by Victoria, you can download and use the One Click LCA spreadsheet to share with contractors etc. There are also descriptions as to how should the data be provided, i.e. saying just concrete will almost never be sufficient enough.
When it comes down to material assemblies though, the level of detail depends on the requirements of the study you are conducting. For instance, LEED has a specific scope that, amongst others, excludes finishes. So, to sum things up, for general purpose you can use the template provided by One Click LCA but for more specific purposes you’d have to use it in tandem with the study’s scope of analysis.
Hope this helped!