Willmott Dixon’s Now or Never interventions are designed to lead our industry from the front, guiding our people and supporting our supply chain to do the right thing in responding to the climate challenge.
Our ambition is to help our supply chain achieve net zero operational carbon by 2040. We also commit to reduce emissions from purchased goods and services by 55% by 2030 and by 100% by 2040 from a 2018 base year.
Decarbonising our supply chain
Taking our supply chain partners with us is essential because their activities on our projects make up 99% of our wider emissions.
We monitor progress by measuring emissions from purchased goods and services from our Category A supply chain partners. These are the businesses we work most closely with, and they make up at least two-thirds of our overall indirect, or ‘scope 3’ emissions.
While we have control over our scope 1 and scope 2 emissions, which cover our own direct emissions and those from the energy and fuel we use respectively, we have far less control over our scope 3 emissions. Scope 3 includes emissions from processes like the extraction and production of raw materials, transportation of goods and services, and disposal of waste.
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2018 (Baseline) |
2023 |
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Willmott Dixon Goods & Services (Cat A Suppliers)(1) (tCO2e) |
807,822
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405,689
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1. In line with the Science Based Target, this includes purchased goods and services from category A suppliers (which makes up at least two thirds of scope 3 emissions).
We support our supply chain partners to develop and implement carbon reduction plans in their own businesses and encourage our Category A suppliers to develop plans to lower diesel use by 2025 and eliminate it by 2030. Working towards our 2040 zero-carbon ambition, in 2023, 10% of our M&E, groundworks and drylining supply chain partners have carbon reduction plans in place.
To find out more about our scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions see the 'Carbon Footprint: Our data' section.
Sustainable Procurement
Our Sustainable Procurement Strategy strengthens our approach to further reducing emissions from our supply chain. We made our policy easy for our supply chain partners to use and understand, supporting innovative, sustainable, and industry leading procurement decisions. All Willmott Dixon’s supply chain partners are required to comply with the policy, and evidence of compliance with specific requirements is provided on request.
During 2023, we carried out some direct engagement with a selection of our principal supply chain partners from across our key trades to better understand how our sustainable procurement policy is received, complied with and used by our supply chain partners. The outcome of this work was to make several recommendations to the business to further improve the sustainable procurement policy in 2024.
Reducing carbon in our materials
Buildings are currently responsible for nearly 40% of global energy related carbon emissions: 28% from operational emissions – the energy needed to heat, cool and power them - and the remaining 11% from materials and construction (World Green Building Council).
The overall footprint of construction materials begins with their extraction, manufacture, and transportation and extends to deconstruction and disposal at the end of a building’s life, all of which contribute to lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions.
Addressing the emissions from the production and distribution of construction materials is a complex challenge. However, it also presents us with an opportunity to build a more transparent and resilient supply chain. While achieving net zero scope 3 carbon emissions requires significant changes, we are committed to work with our partners to guide them through this transition and to deliver all our buildings with net zero embodied carbon by 2040.
In 2023, we carried out 40 life cycle carbon assessments on projects to help us develop our understanding of embodied carbon and the ways we can reduce it. We use insights from carbon assessments inform material and design choices on our customer’s projects.
At Stockport Interchange (below) - a new transportation hub bringing greater connectivity to Greater Manchester - we collaborated with project partners to significantly reduce embodied carbon through changes to the design and materials used. The carbon saving project scheme at Stockport Interchange successfully eliminated embodied carbon from the building equivalent to approximately 25 years of operational energy consumption.
At North Shields Transport Hub (below), we carried out detailed carbon modelling for each stage of the project to identify the most carbon efficient design and material selections. By using low carbon concrete and switching the original steel roof design to a glulam timber roof supported by a steel frame, embodied carbon was reduced by 48% or 511 tCO2e compared to the original design.
Our assessments of lifecycle carbon also inform potential design choices on future projects. Our Tower Bridge Court project for customer FORE Partnership - known as TBC.London - is the first UK construction project to reuse steel from a pre-1940s building and includes the largest percentage reclaimed material we have ever used in a project.
Collaboration between supply chain partners saw 20% of the steel used in the project sourced from either the former House of Fraser department store on Oxford Street (below) or via our supply chain partner Cleveland Steel, using a minimum of 56% recycled content, helping to reduce embodied carbon. We also worked with the developers to re-purpose elements from the original building, such as bricks, and demolition materials, re-using handrails and other fixtures.
Supply Chain Sustainability School
Willmott Dixon is a founding member of the Supply Chain Sustainability School, which provides free training and resources on a range of environmental and social topics for the industry’s shared supply chain.
Since its launch in 2012, 225 supply chain partners and 7,347 member companies have signed up to use this ‘virtual school’. At the end of 2023, 45 of our supply chain partners had achieved gold member status, 63 silver and 9 bronze. During 2023, 294 companies in our supply chain accessed the school’s resources, while 149 of those attended school events.
As founder members of the Supply Chain Sustainability School, we helped create the school’s carbon emissions reporting portal. In 2023, we were the first member to have 100 supply chain partners reporting emissions.