Balfour Beatty has teamed up with the Supply Chain Sustainability School for the second year in a row, undertaking a joint survey targeting hundreds of supply chain partners across the UK to understand the barriers and opportunities faced in decarbonising the sector.

Recognising the important role that the construction and infrastructure sector has to play in achieving Net Zero, the company has set out its findings and recommendations for policy makers, customers, and the industry more widely in its latest thought paper - '2022 Greening the Supply Chain'.

Despite the positive steps that have already been taken across the industry, achieving Net Zero is not a foregone conclusion with 68% of respondents saying that the sector is not well enough prepared, 53% saying that the development pipeline for low-carbon materials is not sufficient to meet demand and 81% indicating that construction practices are changing too slowly.


In addition, 96% of those who responded said that they are experiencing a shortfall in access to skilled people, specifically relating to carbon, sustainability, digital and other related roles, which risks holding back efforts to decarbonise the sector.

In "2022 Greening the Supply Chain", Balfour Beatty highlights the importance of bringing in supply chain partners earlier to put in place the best, low carbon solutions. An area that also requires more focus is the creation of robust measurement and up-to-date reporting standards – these are key for consistency and driving forward progress.

Balfour Beatty will now take the learnings from the survey to understand what more can be done to support the industry in tackling the barriers it currently faces, bringing its supply chain on the journey and encouraging other industry partners to do the same.