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Industry
Corporate Real Estate
Company size
Headquarters
Results
CARBON DECISIONS EARLIER
LCA before design begins
Life cycle assessment now informs projects before design begins, shaping the brief and procurement decisions early.
PORTFOLIO-WIDE BENCHMARKING
Compare carbon performance across projects
A connected Power BI dashboard gives a common view of embodied carbon performance across the global portfolio.
MANUAL DATA HANDLING
Less manual data handling
Structured BIM data, including material types and rebar content, enables automated quantity extraction and EPD matching.
The challenge
Managing embodied carbon across nearly 8 million m² in 60+ countries is a scaling challenge, not a measurement one. Siemens Real Estate faced three barriers: Life cycle assessments (LCA) happened too late, environmental data was fragmented across projects and systems, and sustainability sat alongside project decisions rather than inside them, making a consistent approach hard to apply across teams and regions.
The solution
Siemens Real Estate built a connected workflow around three principles: start LCA earlier, structure project data, and make carbon performance visible portfolio-wide. BIM supplies structured material quantities; One Click LCA delivers life cycle assessment and environmental product declaration (EPD) matching; Power BI brings results together for benchmarking. LCA moved to demand clarification, before design begins, so it can shape design and procurement decisions.
Outcome
The result is a more systematic approach to embodied carbon management across Siemens Real Estate's global portfolio. Project teams can consider carbon earlier, compare performance across projects and regions, identify best practices, and bring carbon and cost information into procurement conversations, building LCA into the systems and decisions that shape projects from the start.
"Sustainability does not scale through ambition alone. Even if ambition matters, it scales through systems, data, and decisions."
BIM integrations: Automate LCAs & EPDs and save time with 20+ BIM & manufacturing integrations.
A global portfolio, a global challenge
Siemens Real Estate manages close to 8 million square meters of office and production space across more than 60 countries. At that scale, the challenge isn't calculating embodied carbon, it's creating a consistent way to use that information across different projects, teams, and regions.
"It's not how to do a life cycle assessment and measure embodied carbon, it's how to scale mitigation across many projects, many different teams, cultural differences, and geography." — Charlotte Miriel, Sustainability-driven Project Leader, Siemens Real Estate
Move LCA before design starts
Siemens Real Estate moved life cycle assessment to the demand clarification stage, before design begins. This allows carbon performance to shape the project brief and influence design and procurement decisions while alternatives are still open.
"As long as sustainability sits next to the project, it will never scale. It has to sit inside the project." — Charlotte Miriel
Benchmark performance across the portfolio
An internal Power BI dashboard brings project results together by asset type and region, letting Siemens Real Estate compare performance, identify best practices, and highlight where the greatest improvement opportunities lie. The same information supports procurement by connecting environmental performance with cost and available solutions.
Build on structured data
The workflow starts with structured BIM data, including material quantities and specifications. That information feeds into One Click LCA, where materials are matched with EPDs and assessed for their environmental impact. Results then flow into project reporting, cost control, targets, and portfolio benchmarking:
BIM → One Click LCA → Power BI → project and procurement decisions
"Good data, both in terms of availability and quality, made our sustainability scalable." — Charlotte Miriel
What this approach shows
Siemens Real Estate's model comes down to three principles: start early, using LCA while project decisions can still change; structure the data, creating consistent information that moves efficiently between systems; and integrate sustainability into decisions, connecting carbon performance with the tools and processes project teams already use.
"Sustainability does not scale through ambition alone. Even if ambition matters, it scales through systems, data, and decisions." — Charlotte Miriel
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