Materials and energy assessment in Ceequal transport projects

The growing prominence of sustainability assessment and carbon calculators in the transport sector has led to a greater general awareness of the sustainability issues associated with infrastructure projects. Ceequal, the assessment and awards scheme for improving sustainability in civil engineering and public realm projects, is identified as the leading methodology for assessing such projects in the UK. Ceequal evaluates sustainability by asking questions over 12 sections, including material and energy use, which previous research has identified as important topics for transport projects. This paper presents analysis of 24 Ceequal projects which are transport-related. It shows that high scores in the material use category have a high correlation to overall project scores. Conversely scores in the energy usage section appear to show little relation to overall project performance. An evaluation of road projects within those assessed reveal a number of what can be considered core transport topics and other topics that have little impact on the overall Ceequal score. Therefore recommendations are made for the development of Ceequal, including the rationalisation of material and energy question sets. The methodology outlined in this work could also be extended to the remaining ten Ceequal sections to develop a suite of more specific assessment schemes focused on different categories of civil engineering projects.