Last week, VHB produced and hosted a half-day Embodied Carbon 101 Workshop at Northeastern University as part of the first-ever Boston Climate Week. The event featured leaders from a variety of disciplines, including environmental engineering, transportation, and sustainable infrastructure policy, whose work touches embodied carbon.
Project Manager and Carbon Reduction Lead Ken Donald opened the session and introduced the Keynote Speaker, President and CEO of the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI) Anthony Kane. He also moderated an informative panel comprising a cross-section of professionals and academics who are committed to reducing embodied carbon in infrastructure development. Panelists included VHB Transportation Engineer Cierra Ford, Skanska USA Civil Northeast Senior VP Paul Pedini, Northeastern University Association Teaching Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Dr. Nancy Varney, Sustainability Planner from the City of Cambridge Tom O’Neil, and Nitsch Engineering Senior Project Engineer Coleman Horsley.
Their discussion demystified embodied carbon as a core design and procurement consideration and offered concrete examples from real projects. Cierra Ford shared her insights as the lead on VHB's recent I-89 Scoping Study and embodied carbon pilot program.
“At VHB, we’ve been working to integrate carbon management strategies into our existing workflows by providing staff with the tools and training to calculate carbon impact throughout planning, design, and construction,” said Cierra. “While this is an important step on the design side, reducing embodied carbon will require collaboration across stakeholder groups. Events like these are important to learn what others are doing, communicate gaps, and drive momentum going forward.”
Raising awareness and understanding of embodied carbon aligns with VHB's larger mission to provide sustainable solutions that shape our communities in meaningful ways. VHB has been at the forefront of decarbonizing infrastructure through scoping and design, taking steps to integrate embodied carbon into our projects and decision-making. We have incorporated a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) on several projects, which allows us to measure the total emission of a project by considering all the GHG emissions produced in every facet of manufacturing, transporting, and construction of each material—setting a benchmark for future projects and highlighting a shift toward a more sustainable and efficient transportation network.
In the second half of the workshop, Ken led an interactive “design decision” game to demonstrate how to create lower-carbon, cost-effective, and buildable designs. Attendees worked through common bridge design decisions—selecting beam types, span configurations, and material options for a virtual project—and discovered how each choice affects embodied carbon, cost, and construction schedule.
“We want to show participants that you don’t have to be a sustainability expert to recognize choices that will lead to lower-carbon projects,” said Ken. “Part of my role at VHB as Carbon Reduction Lead is to increase awareness of how we can apply carbon reduction strategies to projects immediately while staying within budget and schedule.”
Learn how VHB practices sustainability as a foundational element of our approach and read the 2025 Sustainability Report.
