2024 #CCEAwards Showcase: Structures Decarbonization Practice

Image courtesy WSP.

Category: In-house Initiatives

Award of Excellence Winner: WSP

WSP’s structural decarbonization practice is an in-house initiative driven by a dedicated team of structural engineers taking a holistic approach in evolving their design practice toward a new normal. Their journey began with establishing embodied carbon benchmarks for their own structural designs before continuing with foundational training material for Canadian structural engineers to understand core decarbonization issues, developing an industry-first embodied carbon ‘optioneering’ web app and, finally, collaborating with their industry peers to challenge current construction practices.

Areas of focus

The practice’s efforts have centred on the following five key areas:

1. Benchmarking and measuring

Recognizing the critical role of benchmarking as the first step in decarbonization, the team embarked on an extensive effort to establish realistic carbon baselines for different structural typologies.

A custom Autodesk Revit plug-in for WSP-specific models was created to streamline carbon takeoffs. As a result, embodied carbon measurements are done in a matter of minutes—and are now mandated for all projects, ensuring accountability for the engineering firm’s embodied carbon performance year-after-year.

2. Developing knowledge

Another key step toward decarbonizing the structural practice was ensuring engineers understand core issues in the context of their own work. To do this, the team developed a series of one-pagers to distill everything from foundational decarbonization knowledge (e.g. what is a life-cycle analysis?) to highly technical in-house case studies (e.g. what is the carbon impact of optimizing different metal deck configurations?).

3. Leveraging digital innovation

The practice drove a marriage of digital and technical innovation through the development of WSP Dahlia, an industry-first web application for ‘optioneering’ structural configurations. This app is designed to take preliminary design input (e.g. building sector, typical loading, bay sizes, etc.) and generate optimized embodied carbon results for different structural framing configurations.

Having such key metrics at their fingertips when workshopping early design stage framing options with clients will allow WSP’s engineers to influence a project’s carbon from the start, when it’s the easiest to change.

4. Changing construction practices

To help bring decarbonization strategies to life, efforts were made to redevelop WSP’s contract documents that form construction requirements.

Specifically, the team redeveloped material specifications to allow for more innovative decarbonization strategies, such as low-carbon concrete and sustainable timber. Many of these specification changes were based on WSP’s recent project experiences that had positively challenged the industry status quo.

5. Material circularity

Promoting material circularity, starting with the reuse of steel, has set WSP apart as an industry leader. The firm has engaged stakeholders across the supply chain and leveraged its project experiences in the ‘circular economy’ to drive change.

Yielding results

The key purpose of this practice initiative is to enable WSP to reach its decarbonization goal of net-zero by 2040. The benefits will include increasing efficiencies, winning meaningful and profitable work, raising environmental, social and governance (ESG) profits sought by investors, retaining talent and elevating the firm’s reputation.

Being able to leverage WSP’s embodied carbon benchmark data has allowed a broader team to be able to inform clients, based on their sector and building typology, about realistic embodied carbon targets for their projects. This data is also invaluable for winning advisory work with municipalities and policymakers. And thanks to the in-house carbon takeoff Revit plug-in, generating such data for current and future projects only takes minutes.

The decarbonization team developed engineering studies on how to improve the carbon performance of various structural systems, addressing such construction materials as steel, timber and concrete. Photos courtesy WSP.

Ensuring WSP’s structural engineers are properly informed about how they can help clients meet their own decarbonization targets is significantly beneficial to winning meaningful, profitable work. Not only is the firm upskilling its engineers, but external partners have also approached it to publish decarbonization material for the broader public.

The new carbon optioneering web app is a groundbreaking tool with many benefits. Not only does it increase WSP’s internal efficiencies for workshopping schematic design options with clients, but it also demonstrates how the firm is an innovator, benefiting its brand reputation both locally and globally.

Being able to put structural decarbonization strategies into practice by revising construction documents will have a lasting impact on the firm and the industry. Taking lessons learned from other projects and ingraining them in standard templates not only provides an efficiency gain for future projects, but also provides a stepping stone for future innovation.

A passionate initiative

The talent retention and professional development aspects of this in-house initiative should not be understated. The project’s development has been flanked by a passionate team of structural engineers who are highly motivated in driving positive change.

Decarbonization in itself is a broad topic and has a significant overlap with other key interests, including technical expertise, operational excellence and digital ingenuity. Allowing structural engineers to marry one or more of their passions with positive change for the environment has already proven deeply rewarding for the team.

Indeed, this initiative drove the team to question the way WSP has been designing structures in the past, to connect with like-minded peers locally and globally and to identify how change is possible if they act together.

The structural decarbonization practice exemplifies the firm’s core values and guiding principles through exceptional contributions to environmental stewardship. Its leadership, innovative thinking and collaborative approach have laid the foundation for a more sustainable future.

Structures Decarbonization Practice, Toronto

Award-winning firm (structural engineer): WSP, Toronto (Sarah Zakaib, P.Eng.; Lucy Yan, P.Eng.).

Owner: WSP.

Other key players: n/a.