Historically, there’s been a view that sustainability measures are expensive and detract from core activity. In this guest blog, John Fraser, President for the UK and Benelux at Hexagon Geosystems, argues that a focus on sustainability really can save time and money while offering firms a competitive edge.

Like many companies nowadays, Hexagon AB has ambitious sustainability goals. For example, we’re determined to be carbon-neutral in our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030, and all of our direct suppliers will be subject to sustainability audits by 2023.

However, it isn’t all about us. I’m convinced that Hexagon works harder than most when it comes to helping our customers to operate more sustainably, too. This matters, because they’re already working hard and under pressure, and anything that comes with built-in sustainability is a bonus. Not only can we help customers to achieve their own goals more easily, but this helps them to win more competitive tenders – which increasingly demand evidence of their sustainability credentials.

I believe we support our customers in three key ways. First, we help them to capture one reality, once only. Second, we deliver better data so that they can make better decisions. And third, we help them to work more efficiently in a sustainable manner with the data.

Capture one reality, once

At Hexagon Geosystems, we’re all about capturing, measuring, and visualising the physical world in a digital way. Our customers can rapidly create a ‘digital twin’ of any location, enabling them to test and model it, or endlessly revisit it, without having to be present or make irreversible changes.

If they can capture one reality in the most efficient and effective way, and be confident in its accuracy, they can depend upon it. By not having to re-capture that data for a long time to come, they can save significant amounts of time and money. Our end-to-end digital workflows enable projects to be completed faster and with less rework – which is not only good for productivity and profitability, but for sustainability, too.

For example, the precise location of underground utilities and surrounding features can be captured in a fraction of the time, both above and below ground. With this real-time information, multiple stakeholders can make faster, more well-informed decisions.

By removing the number site visits required, and eliminating errors in locating assets, major savings can be realised in terms of time, money, vehicle emissions and waste. There will be less need for future maintenance and that maintenance will also be more sustainable, since workers will be able to go straight to the correct location.

Better data means better decisions

Most organisations are under heavy pressure with budgets, schedules and the demand for increasingly complex problem-solving. We respond to this in the way we design our products and services, as well as the sectors we work with and the applications we propose.

For example, we supply laser-scanning and GNSS equipment to many of the UK’s police forces for a range of applications, including the investigation of serious vehicle collisions. It costs around £1 million per carriageway, per hour, for a motorway to remain shut, and the total cost of incident-related traffic jams to the UK economy is around £9 billion per year. That’s why it’s significant that our technology enables traffic officers to accurately capture the scene within minutes, rather than hours, and to reopen the roads much more rapidly.

But that’s far from the whole story. A critically important aspect of reopening the roads faster is the environmental impact: a 2017 study found that disruption on British motorways and A roads causes around 3,700 traffic jams a day. This means thousands of vehicles crawling or stationary, their idling engines emitting carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane into the atmosphere. Keeping traffic moving protects our lungs and protects the planet from climate change.

Efficiency is key to a Sustainable approach

By making it possible to capture highly accurate location data, we enable our customers to reduce their projects’ environmental footprints. Sometimes that’s about reducing emissions, as I’ve already mentioned. Accurate location data can help you to improve efficiency in the construction Workflows. Getting to grade first time and moving material once allows for reduced fuel consumption and improved productivity..

But it can also be about eliminating waste. Whether you’re drilling a tunnel or pouring the foundations for a high-rise building, you can’t afford to make a mistake. But mistakes do get made in construction, and usually because of human error. These can be non-trivial, at worst resulting in years of delay and billions in additional costs.

Accurate location data can slash your margins of error. This has implications all the way up the supply chain: it means less manufacturing, smelting and fabrication; less haulage of steel and concrete; and less waste to be transported away, destined for landfill. It means less requirement for heavy machinery on-site (such as excavators, bulldozers, pile-drivers, dumper-trucks, rollers and cranes), which means fewer emissions and slower depreciation of that equipment.

Clearly, beside the environmental impact, all of this has knock-on effects for reputations, end-customer and public satisfaction, and profitability. Besides cost-saving, there’s also the avoidance of penalty clauses for schedule overruns.

This is why I firmly believe that attention to sustainability delivers better outcomes not only for our planet but for businesses, too. That’s why Hexagon continually works to support our customers in focusing on sustainability from the very start to the very end of every workflow.