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Jon Fawcett is technical manager at Keyline

On October 2024, Keyline drew up a proposal for pursuing PAS 2080 accreditation. In doing so, it set about trying to become the first civils merchant to achieve this, and earlier this year it succeeded. Technical manager Jon Fawcett is keen to emphasise that this is about achieving practical change in the industry, not just publicity.

“For Keyline, it made sense to pursue this because we are not just a default civils merchant. We have several causes like the road runoff group where we try to make a difference on the environment, and PAS 2080 felt like a good way to make a tangible difference for the public good.

“Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions are a challenge for the sector and the government has targets to bring that to net zero. So, we can see the moral case for doing what needs to be done to bring down climate impact, and the business case to being on the right side of that in the supply chain.”

Achieving accreditation

A large part of the work towards accreditation came at the preparation stage, explains Fawcett. “Preparation is about going through how we make decisions, how we plan things and how we cascade information down to employees. And that was a really good fact-finding process for the business. We were pleasantly surprised at what we found in terms of our processes and practices, but it became clear that we needed to ensure a lot of that was formalised to ensure our people had the right information available to them.”

Then came implementation. “We conducted gap analysis, collated our roadmaps across the company and the decisions we were making. In buildings, were we doing things right with things like LED lights and solar panels? With our fleet, we looked at whether we doing it right with biofuel. And then we looked at the conversations we were having with contractors, suppliers and so on.

“A big thing with this was internal communication and showcasing innovative suppliers because within Keyline, we needed to disseminate information from one part of the business to others. For example, there were questions about whether one part of the business knowing about a low carbon timber solution could ensure that that knowledge reached other parts of Keyline, as well as other group companies, too.”

This work was aided by the wider Travis Perkins Group environmental team, which Fawcett explains has been very good at engaging on carbon data and Scope 3 emissions.

As a result, the improvements identified included the need for a structure to be put in place to formalise information flow. “A lot of conversations were happening with clients about possible lower carbon materials such as basalt rebar. But not a lot of the people having this conversation knew in detail where it was from, who produced it or what the data showed about its impact. That has now changed as PAS 2080 has helped us get everyone on the same page by getting that process in place.”

That leads to accreditation, and Fawcett notes that this is not a particularly long process. “Almost all of the work comes before accreditation. Then we had around seven days during which external third-party auditors did a paperwork audit to assess the data, talked with people throughout the business and wrote a report that recognised the good work we were doing, as well as making recommendations for the future. So, accreditation was a short process that followed months of work.”

That doesn’t mean Keyline hasn’t found accreditation to be of real value in and of itself, however.

Fawcett explains: “Since being accredited, we have been able to speak with much greater authority on decarbonisation, and we are on the same page as many of the clients we are speaking with. If you look at Lower Thames Crossing and the commitments they’ve made on carbon, it can only be of benefit to us to be on the same page as them.

“In that sense, PAS 2080 has locked in behaviours and mentalities within our business culture. Lower Thames Crossing wanted every part of the supply chain to be pursuing decarbonisation, and if the main contractor and subcontractor are PAS 2080 accredited, there’s a much-reduced risk of carbon rising in an attempt to reduce cost further down the supply chain. Other big clients are doing this, too. We see the same with AMP8 in the water industry.

“PAS 2080 locks in processes and practices but it also sends a great message to our people that we aren’t letting this go under the radar, and that can only be a good thing for our long-term culture.”

Unique space for innovation

One thing NCE hears a lot from industry is that part of the challenge in bringing forward new technologies is that it is hard to create the space for innovation. Whether it is because of understandable safety and cost conservatism among clients, or the lack of capacity within supply chains to try new things, it can be hard to adopt innovations.

Fawcett sees the role of the civils merchant as providing that space. “Smaller projects may not be at the same level as LTC, but suppliers with lower carbon alternatives are better placed for us to put forward wherever there’s a brief to reduce carbon. And there are so many areas in which to reduce carbon.

“Take replacing steel rebar foundations with basalt rebar foundations for example. That may have a higher cost on the product itself, but it’s lighter than steel, it has no conductive properties which means it can go where steel can’t, and when you factor in these wider aspects, you can save cost by using basalt rebar, despite the higher like-for-like cost of product, because you don’t need to use it like-for-like.

“As a merchant, we can support that process. We rely on suppliers and work with them for their carbon data and our technical team is employed to seek out and understand new technologies. Decarbonisation is where the industry is going and where all parties are headed, so it’s almost academic that it’s difficult, because it has to happen and clients want the visibility of data we can help provide.”

This brings us to what Fawcett sees as the most exciting part of achieving PAS 2080.

“Within the technical team, it is part of our remit to look for new technologies available. We attend innovation days and conferences and where we find a possible space for an innovation, we onboard them.

“Onboarding is a significant process. We do due diligence with every supplier, so we research them and ensure they have the right testing regime and standards in place for whatever they supply. We onboard them with the caveat that we don’t put them in front of customers until they’ve been upskilled for that, and are able to set out properly what their product can really achieve. But once ready, we become the bridge between an innovative supplier and the customer.

“Take site trials, where the suppliers will be there on site to support that. Keyline can facilitate the supplier and accompany them with that and ensure their product is used correctly and, where needed, we can hand-hold them through that process. That’s really important because it would reflect poorly on us to just find new products and throw them at a project, and it wouldn’t get the best outcomes from those products.

“At the same time, we can also see alternative products emerge from suppliers with whom we already work. So we seek to be up to date on what they are doing. Some big parties are innovating, other innovations come from small start-ups. And what’s great about PAS 2080 is that we’ve formalised and verified that we can be the right partners for that innovation space that our industry needs to foster if we want to eliminate carbon long-term.”

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