Case studies of the California High Speed Rail and San Francisco AirTrain Extension have recently been completed for the Swedish-funded Ipress project (Implementation of Procurement Requirements for Sustainable Collaboration in Infrastructure Projects), organizers report in a blog posting.
Interviews along the projects’ value chain have provided valuable input and examples for Impres’ goal of creating guidelines for carbon management through procurement requirements in infrastructure projects, the blog says.
Impress porject manager Stefan Uppenberg, sustainability consultant at WSP Group, and Daniel Balian, completing his masters thesis at WSP, conducted the interviews.
“We talked with many different people – from politicians and clients to consultants, contractors and suppliers, and asked questions on how requirements are set to reduce green house gas emissions,” Uppenburg said. “We also asked about organization, drivers, success factors and challenges.”
The Impres project is co-funded by the Construction Climate Challenge (CCC), hosted by Volvo Construction Equipment and will run for two years. Its overall aim is to contribute to a more efficient implementation of policies and goals for reducing climate impact from the infrastructure sector, especially focusing on procurement requirements.
“It’s too early to talk about any results yet, but many said in our interviews that it is crucial with cooperation between different actors along the value chain and that one important factor for success also is that there are enthusiasts with a strong driving force involved in the projects,” Uppenberg says.
Organizers expect the Impres project will result in recommendations and guidelines collected from best case practices, including the two US cases. Now the Impres project continues its search for new case studies in Australia, the UK and China. The project will also incorporate results from existing Swedish case studies.
