The UK construction sector is falling far short of sector level targets for low carbon building, at a time when the Government’s plans for a post-pandemic, green future are poised to raise the bar. Whilst policy makers and professional bodies have begun to develop new technical standards and guidance, far less attention has been paid to organisational challenges .Sector level guidelines signal a number of organisational barriers including: failure to operationalize predicted outcomes, linear design processes and limited supply chain capacity, while academic research focuses on the transfer of technical information, discrete delivery attributes and lack of energy management capacity.

The Carbon Artifacts Project aid the challenge of enabling low carbon buildings, by offering a detailed analysis of the organisational processual weak spots, where differences in understanding of specific artifacts push carbon commitments off the agenda and modifications at one phase of a project inadvertently inflect or preclude solutions down the road.