Picking the Low-Hanging Fruits - Sustainable Revision of Design Guide for City of Helsinki

Many challenges need to be solved to make construction truly sustainable. For closing the gap, there are many actions the journey could be rather easily started with. Many cities have some level of carbon-neutrality or zero-carbon goals. A roadmap was written for the City of Helsinki, with a focus on reducing the GWP in concrete infrastructure construction. The roadmap will support Helsinki’s goal to be carbon-neutral by 2030. In the roadmap, possible emission reduction actions of different maturity are presented. Because the problems are usually intertwined, also some actions considering other sustainability aspects, such as costs, durability and circularity of materials and structures, are presented. Based on the roadmap, the Helsinki’s civil engineering works design guide was revised. Revised design guide includes two kind of changes: Some easily implementable requirements, for example to specify lower-carbon concrete and carry an emission calculation, and focused information on what holistic sustainability means in bridges and such structures. The latter one could be seen as an attempt to influence the attitude of engineers. First-mentioned could be seen as an entry-level implementation of climate actions, which’ ambition-level, and impact, will rise over time. As growing capital of Finland, City of Helsinki is a big client, with huge potential to change the industry more sustainable. Implementation of the revised guide into the projects is a start, but it won’t make the construction sustainable alone. Further studies and guidance on actions presented in roadmap is needed, as well as other actions by both city and industry.