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Steel plays a major role in constructing our built world – look at our skyscrapers, houses, railways, cars, boats, energy transmission systems. Modern civilisation is unthinkable without it.

map marker United Kingdom | 08 July 2024

Demand for this wonder-material continues to rise - an astonishing 1.9 billion tonnes of steel in 2023 were produced, according to The World Steel Association, the vast majority of it made in China.

However, steel is a particularly fossil-fuel-intensive form of manufacturing – for each tonne produced, around 2 tonnes of CO2 goes into the atmosphere. So reusing existing, reclaimed steel makes a lot of sense in the battle against global warming.

To boost the shift towards more sustainable construction, WSP has developed a digital Steel Reuse Tool to help our clients decarbonise their operations and recycle materials more efficiently. Using reclaimed steel rather than newly-manufactured can save tonnes of CO2 emissions.

Take the Elephant & Castle Town Centre project, for example. In this mixed-use development comprising four buildings and a shared basement, our Steel Reuse Tool has helped constructors Multiplex replace 74 tonnes (20%) of specified new steel with reclaimed steel, saving an impressive 125 tonnes of CO2e.

And we achieved this without adding any extra cost to the project. A win for all the stakeholders.

Author

Website-audrey-mciver
Audrey McIver
Director, Building Structures
United Kingdom
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In another example, one of our clients plans to refurbish their London headquarters, adding a two-story extension without the need for new foundations or strengthening works, using 100% reclaimed steel. This collaboration between WSP, the architect, and steel re-use stockist Cleveland Steel, will result in a saving of 35 tonnes of CO2e.

How it works

The Steel Reuse Tool is an easy-to-use software program that cross-references a database of available reclaimed steel with the steel elements of the project to identify potential matches, then calculates which steel could be replaced with reclaimed steel without compromising the design.

The tool can be installed on any device and is compatible with any Revit 3D Model. It takes the steel structural elements of the design and finds matches for them, working out how the reclaimed sections can be integrated seamlessly with new sections without any loss of quality.

We work closely with architects and other trades to coordinate where and how reclaimed steel sections can be integrated into the design, with the tool working out the estimated tonnage of steel that could be replaced.

These revised designs can then be reimported into Revit to see how this affects the overall design, giving the design team the flexibility to make changes as necessary.

The tool’s algorithm ensures that, on average, 90% of the available length of reclaimed steel sections is used. It also finds compatible secondary lengths if, for example, you need to add to a reclaimed section of a beam that isn’t quite long enough, say .

What’s more, the available stock of reclaimed steel is constantly changing, so the tool will keep track of this as the project develops. And clients have the ability to reuse the tool as many times as they want throughout the project.

The tool also generates a useful Excel spreadsheet summarising the carbon savings.

Conclusion

The WSP Steel Reuse Tool offers an effective way to reduce embedded carbon in building design, promotes the circular economy, reduces carbon emissions, and helps companies achieve their decarbonisation goals and sustainability reporting requirements.

Why not see what it could achieve in your design and construction project?


CO2e - carbon dioxide equivalent is a metric measure used to compare the emissions from various greenhouse gases on the basis of their global-warming potential (GWP), by converting amounts of other gases to the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide with the same global warming potential. Value report is for module A1-A3.