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BDP and NBS have launched a partnership off the back of the former’s involvement in the latter’s new Lifecycle Carbon Assessment (LCA) platform.
The NBS LCA integrates carbon calculations with live design work, drawing on structured data from Circular Ecology’s ICE Database and more than 12,500 verified, specification-ready construction products with Environmental Product Declarations from NBS Source and ECO Portal.
BDP’s primary contribution to NBS LCA was the development of more than 1,300 precalculated generic assemblies, covering the most commonly used building fabric elements alongside key concrete and steel structural elements.
These assemblies provide whole-element carbon data, giving designers consistent, UK-relevant carbon benchmarks from the earliest stages of project design. According to NBS, users can easily and instantly apply carbon rates to a range of preconfigured common building elements, including walls, floors and roofs.
Developed by BDP and NBS, the assemblies remove the need for designers to manually build up material layers or calculate individual components at the concept stage. “This saves significant time and effort, enabling proportionate and responsible carbon evaluation early in the design process, when decisions have the greatest impact on a project’s overall carbon footprint,” NBS said.
BDP also participated in collaborative workshops that directly informed the development of NBS LCA, helping to shape the tool into being practical, accessible and aligned with real-world UK construction workflows.
A reliable starting point for carbon assessment
Dr Lee Jones, head of sustainability at NBS’s parent Hubexo, said: “BDP’s contribution to NBS LCA has been invaluable. Their depth of project experience and technical knowledge has directly shaped the generic assemblies at the heart of the platform.
“These assemblies give designers a reliable, UK-relevant starting point for carbon assessment, without the burden of building everything from scratch. This is exactly the kind of collaboration that moves the industry forward, and we’re proud to be working with BDP on a long-term basis.”
Julia Yao, associate and sustainability consultant at BDP, added: “Carbon assessment needs to be embedded in design from day one, not bolted on at the end. Working with NBS to develop its LCA product has been a genuine opportunity to put that principle into practice.
“The generic assemblies we developed draw on real project data and are designed to give designers meaningful, actionable carbon information at the concept stage. We’re delighted to see them at the core of a platform that will be used across the industry.”
Over the coming months, NBS and BDP will develop their partnership, with a “shared commitment to improving the quality and accessibility of carbon data for construction professionals across the UK”.
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