Find & Compare Materials

Initially, the Find and Compare Materials feature allows a user to search within nine materials categories: Concrete, Steel, Wood, Glass, Aluminum, Insulation, Gypsum, Carpet and Ceiling Tiles. Within each material category, a user can search by material specific performance characteristics, location, and custom items such as manufacturer name, product description, etc. The tool will return all material EPDs that meet the user's search criteria. The list can then be filtered and sorted by such criteria as manufacturer name, plant name, product description, kgCO2e.

Plan & Compare Buildings

The Plan and Compare Buildings Feature in the Building Planner, allows a user to create a project and input specific information about that project (Name, location, stage of development, square footage, and more).

The user can imput project material quantities by hand, utilizing contruction estimates or via import of project BIM models. The tool currently works with Autodesk's BIM 360 modelling software and will be expanded to interface with others, such as Tally.

The user can then select "search" to enter the Find and Compare Materials feature directly from the Building Planner to create the project's embodied carbon estimate.

Users can set project specific reduction targets, and after products have been procured, select utilized products to document the project's actual reductions against the targets set.

All of the above is visualized in the project's Sankey Diagram, a simple graphic representation of the project's embodied carbon baseline estimate, reduction target and as built results. The visualization can be utilized as the mechanism for reporting to a project's Owner, the ILFI and LEED certification systems' embodied carbon imperatives and pilot credit or as response to policies such as Buy Clean California.

Declare Your Products

Within this feature, the EC3 tool has created a standard format for EPD data to be documented.

Users can view the digital EPDs in lieu of downloading a multipage PDF and having to dig through pages of data to find the information they are looking for.

The digital EPD also displays the EC3 methodology documented in the published and public Material Category Reports to enable everyone to view and understand the level of potential variability within an EPD based on the sources and transparency of the data provided. For example: "is it average or facility specific data?'

Verify & Audit

Within this Declare your Products feature, the EC3 tool has created  the Verify & Audit function:

• Manufacturers and Program Operators can manually type in the data from the Declare your Products page.
• Program Operators can verify that the data is accurate and modify it if necessary.