Webcor Builders announces NCMS - an enterprise tool that encourages insightful collaboration with customers to actively measure and manage the usually hidden natural capital costs of a construction project across the supply chain.
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) October 14, 2013
Webcor Builders, a major California commercial construction contractor with headquarters in San Francisco, and an award-winning leader in the built environment, today announced, in collaboration with Climate Earth, Inc., Natural Capital Management System (NCMS) – an enterprise tool that encourages insightful collaboration with customers to actively measure and manage the usually hidden natural capital costs of a construction project across the supply chain.
Webcor was an early adopter of green building practices and today over 90% of its projects meet or exceed the USGBC Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold Certification. Building on Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs), NCMS is the latest and most advanced tool to date for collaborating with customers to build better environments.
Webcor and its suppliers now recognize and depend on natural capital such as clean water, land, forests and clean air to do business. The extraction and manufacture of materials used in every building consume these natural assets. Building owners have an increased desire to understand and reduce these environmental impacts. Unfortunately, until now, there was not a way to rapidly produce the information needed to assess the costs and reduction opportunities related to the natural capital used in Webcor’s supply chain.
Webcor’s NCMS is integrated with their Building Information Modeling System to provide ‘near on-demand’ natural capital management of any building project. A full building environmental footprint and a natural capital management system for any project can be generated quickly during the design phase when changes can still be made.
NCMS focuses a new lens on the construction costs, enabling Webcor to go beyond LEED, collaborating with clients to gain insight and take action. NCMS answers questions such as: Which building element has the highest natural capital cost? How does the value of water depletion compare to land use and greenhouse gas emissions? And in conjunction with Webcor, where can we make changes to reduce those costs? In short, NCMS produces timely insights into the natural capital costs and opportunities that are triggered around the world from the use of different materials and building designs.
"Like most companies we had minimal exposure to, or understanding of the value or costs of the critical natural assets that our clients depend on. But, clearly every link in the supply chain uses natural capital such as water, land, chemicals, and greenhouse gas emissions," said Webcor’s Vice President of Sustainability, Phil Williams, "In conjunction with EPDs our new NCMS will be the foundation for understanding these strategic costs and working with our clients and partners to build less resource-intensive environments."
Chris Erickson, CEO of Climate Earth, welcomes Webcor’s industry leadership. "Climate Earth believes that natural capital management is an urgent business issue and we are thrilled that insightful leaders, like those at Webcor, are not only using NCMS internally, but as a tool to collaborate with customers and suppliers," said Erickson. "It was our pleasure to work with Webcor and deliver cutting-edge technology for the management of natural capital in such a complex environment as the construction industry."
About Webcor (http://www.webcor.com):
Webcor, based in San Francisco, California, is a leading provider of "green" construction related services – from pre-construction planning, design, engineering, building and project management – for clients across various markets. Webcor is an award-winning leader in sustainable "green" building - providing clients with efficient, high-performance buildings since the mid-1990s.
About Climate Earth (http://www.climateearth.com):
Climate Earth, based in Berkeley, California, is a leading provider of systems, data and services for sustainability management. Web-based solutions include supply chain assessments, environmental product declarations (EPDs), and natural capital management systems. The company has expertise in enterprise systems, "big" data, and life cycle analysis. Solutions combine environmental impact data with business systems to provide rich analytics in business context.