Bridging Design and Construction for Carbon Alignment

The built environment is both at the center of the climate challenge, with buildings still accounting for about 37% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and essential to its solution. Materials and construction processes represent a major share of the sector’s upfront carbon impact, and carbon reductions identified during design are only pivotal if they survive the journey into construction. “Bridging Design and Construction for Carbon Alignment” provides a set of best practices developed under the WBCSD by a global cohort of ten design and construction firms, with the technical leadership from Autodesk, helping owners, design teams, and preconstruction teams keep carbon reduction ambitions as a project moves from design into construction.

What is it?

This report examines how carbon information, assumptions, and reduction potential can become fragmented as a project transitions from design into construction. It sets out eight best practices for keeping design intent intact through the handover, each mapped to the party responsible for acting on it: owner, design team, or preconstruction team. For this phase, the cohort expanded to include four construction firms working alongside the six design and consultancy firms involved in previous phases, using a real-world project as the basis for a simulated design-to-preconstruction information exchange and running carbon assessments along the different project stages.

This report builds on two phases that focused on aligning BIM-enabled embodied carbon assessments during design: A Path to Alignment in the Built Environment (2024, Phase 1) and A Guide to Alignment in the Built Environment (2025, Phase 2).

Who is it for?

• Architects, designers, and preconstruction teams
• Owners, developers, and contractors
• Sustainability consultants, carbon estimators, and cost estimators
• Anyone involved in carrying carbon reduction intent from design through to construction

Why read it?

• Learn where and why carbon intent gets lost in the design-to-construction handover, and who is responsible for addressing it
• Gain eight concrete best practices for preserving carbon reduction intent from design through construction
• Understand how BIM and 2D documentation, such as drawings and specifications, need to work together to carry low-carbon decisions into procurement
• Learn from a real project simulation carried out by ten design and construction firms across a full design-bid-build cycle

Applying these best practices helps project teams treat carbon as a managed project commitment, tied to scope, cost, schedule, procurement, and governance, rather than a disconnected sustainability deliverable.

This publication is the result of collaboration between WBCSD, Autodesk, AECOM, Arcadis, Arup, Foster + Partners, Ramboll, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), DPR Construction, Gammon Construction, Multiplex, and Turner Construction.