Impres performs first case studies in California

Dubai, UAE, July 3, 2017:  Case studies of the infrastructure projects California High Speed Rail and San Francisco AirTrain Extension have recently been completed in the research project Impres. Interviews along the projects’ value chains have provided valuable input and examples for Impres’ goal of creating guidelines for carbon management through procurement requirements in infrastructure projects.

Stefan Uppenberg, sustainability consultant at WSP Group and project manager for the Impres project, and Daniel Balian, who’s doing his masters thesis at WSP, conducted the interviews.

“We talked with many different people – from politicians and clients to consultants, contractors and suppliers, and asked questions on how requirements are set to reduce green house gas emissions. We also asked about organization, drivers, success factors and challenges,” says Stefan Uppenberg.

The Impres project is co-funded by the Construction Climate Challenge (CCC), hosted by Volvo Construction Equipment and will run for two years. Its over all aim is to contribute to a more efficient implementation of policies and goals for reducing climate impact from the infrastructure sector, especially focusing on procurement requirements.

“It’s too early to talk about any results yet, but many said in our interviews that it is crucial with cooperation between different actors along the value chain and that one important factor for success also is that there are enthusiasts with a strong driving force involved in the projects,” says Stefan Uppenberg.

The result of the Impres project will become recommendations and guidelines collected from best case practices, including the two US cases. Now the Impres project continues its search for new case studies in Australia, the UK and China. The project will also incorporate results from existing case studies made in Sweden.