Digital workflows have a crucial role to play in decarbonising roads and highways, writes Andy Clifton, senior support engineer at Topcon
With 2050’s net zero target on the horizon, the road construction sector is understandably feeling the pressure to deliver on decarbonising and play its part. There’s little doubt that sustainable transport will be a pillar of the carbon neutral economy, but the sustainability of the infrastructure required to support it must also be considered.
The challenge for highways agencies is to deliver works fit for next-generation, electric and autonomous vehicles while simultaneously minimising their environmental impact.
The answer lies with machine control and digital construction, which can ensure more streamlined construction processes, along with superior accuracy and efficiency.
This technology is within reach of road constructors and, if the sector is to successfully play its part in meeting national sustainability goals, can no longer be overlooked.
Using materials right
When decarbonising highway projects, it’s impossible to separate materials, operational efficiency and sustainability.
This reflects the wider attitudes in the construction industry as a whole – Topcon’s report, The Future of Machine Control, revealed that addressing the supply chain of materials is considered a vital factor in meeting sustainability targets, coming joint top with machine control and automation.
It’s a view echoed by National Highways in the UK. Within its zero carbon roadmap for steel, concrete and asphalt, commitments to “focus on lean design and right-first-time delivery” and construction best practice to reduce material usage are interwoven with commitments to leverage next-generation materials.
Meticulous material management on this scale is impossible without the precision enabled by digital workflows.
The ability to transfer 3D models directly on to variable depth millers ensures only what’s needed is milled, without the need for bulky averaging skis.
National Highways found that every tonne of asphalt it lays emits an average of 70kg CO2e – adding up to more than 70,000 tonnes of carbon in 2020. This illustrates the scale of highways projects, a scale at which even small improvements in accuracy and efficiency will have a big impact.
Delivering leaner projects offsets the increased costs of more sustainable asphalt products, chiefly bio-component bitumen binders such as that used in Shell’s CarbonSink, which stores rather than releases carbon.
However, cost and risk remain barriers to widespread adoption, so guarantees that the product will be used efficiently will help establish a clear return on investment and make it easier to scale up these products.
The challenge for highways agencies is to deliver works fit for next-generation, electric and autonomous vehicles while simultaneously minimising their environmental impact.
Working faster with digital workflows
Maintenance also has a role to play in the journey to net zero – maintaining existing roads is greener than replacing or resurfacing them, and preventative work to keep them in service for longer reduces disruption to users and operational carbon footprint.
The ability to collect road surface data quickly and frequently makes it easier to monitor road conditions and intervene before repairs become costly and carbon-intensive.
Digital technology makes this possible without closing the road – scanners such as the Topcon RD-M1 collect road surface data while driving at normal highway speeds, using LiDAR and GNSS technology to capture hundreds of data points per second and providing the full picture with no disruption.
By keeping the road open, these systems remove a serious barrier to keeping on top of road conditions.
If they do find work needs to be done, digital workflows enable said work to be completed faster and get the road back into service sooner.
Here, highways agencies and paving contractors can learn from resurfacing and maintenance projects at airports and racetracks, which need to be completed in hours rather than days.
These projects use machinery guided by machine control and working from 3D scanning data to reach the final design faster. This is speed that can be leveraged on public roads to fix faults before they become a real problem.
Robust reporting will enable other road decarbonising projects
Being able to collect, report and leverage sustainability data from highways projects is as important as achieving reductions in the first place.
Not only will this data be crucial to understanding the progress made and work still needed, but it also allows highways agencies to contribute to the economy-wide transition to carbon neutrality.
But measuring all of the factors that contribute to a project’s carbon footprint and bringing them together into a comprehensible indicator of progress is no small task.
In Topcon’s The Future of Machine Control report, almost a third of respondents identified managing complex project data as a challenge they face on projects.
Combining machine control technology with digital workflow software gives site managers a comprehensive and intuitive view of everything contributing to emissions totals, and the insights needed to reduce them.
Nowhere is it more important to have a handle on this data than in the reporting process because it’s this data that demonstrates that these projects are walking the walk and making meaningful progress towards their targets.
For large businesses operating in the EU, this process is set to become much more detailed with the introduction of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which will require businesses to report sustainability data on the same level that they do financial data.
The first reports will be submitted in 2025, but the reporting period started in January 2024, so businesses need to have systems in place to collect and manage that data now.
Supporting a sustainable future
While there’s no quick fix to ensure road and highway projects are made more sustainable, incremental improvements promote the efficiency and accuracy of projects as well as reduce their environmental impact.
More broadly, this is why machine control technology and digital workflows have such a crucial role to play in decarbonisation. Together, they allow the industry to work at its best ability now, while also preparing the sector for future innovations. This approach guarantees that when sustainable technologies and materials become available at scale, they’re arriving in a sector that’s already progressing on its journey towards decarbonisation.
