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ASPEC – Artificial Intelligence System for Predicting Embodied Carbon in Construction – has been developed with UK government funding to help the drive to net zero carbon.
Construction contractors Winvic and Costain have developed the embodied carbon analytics AI tool with the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol. The consortium that was awarded £800,000 funding by Innovate UK in November 2020 to create technology to help drive down industry carbon emissions and meet government’s green targets.
They are now inviting people across the construction industry to register at www.carboncalculated.co.uk for a free trial.
Users will be able to upload a 3D BIM file – a Revit model – to the web-based system and it will calculate the building or infrastructure project’s carbon output. Materials can then be altered within ASPEC to affect the real-time calculations of the carbon data. This allows construction schemes to be designed in a ‘green first’, non-time-consuming approach for the first time, they say.
ASPEC is integrated with the government Green House Gas conversion factors, Inventory of Carbon & Energy (ICE) and the Environment Agency (EA), making it the largest database of environmental construction data in the world, it is claimed. It also allows users to upload their own materials databases, which will work alongside the data points already available.
Winvic digital engineering manager Morgan Hambling, the ASPEC project lead, said: “When we started this Innovate UK funded project two years ago, embodied construction calculation methods were onerous at best and there was simply no efficient way for design teams to proactively reduce the carbon footprint of projects. Therefore, ASPEC is transformational for the industry as contractors, consultants and material manufacturers can at last sit in the driving seat with this fit-for-purpose cloud-based tool.
“With the Innovate UK two-year funding period now over and development in its final stages, we’re now inviting people to visit the ASPEC website to register their interest. We’re looking for professionals to get hands on in a free trial towards the end of the year – this is just the beginning, where we can all make the real impact that is required to meet client and building occupier needs as well as important government and industry targets.”
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