Enabling decarbonization through sustainability insights on assets

EY teams and IBM join forces to help infrastructure owners and operators with decarbonization through Sustainable Enterprise Asset Management

To build a sustainable world, we must build more sustainable economies, societies, and communities and the infrastructure which supports and enables them. Civil infrastructure companies which own, build, and operate our roads, railways, bridges, and tunnels play a vital role in this.

The sustainability agenda impacts decision-making in companies and requires operators to act and rethink efforts when planning, constructing, and maintaining civil infrastructure.

Civil infrastructures operators and owners face a number of challenges:

• Aging Infrastructure and sustained underinvestment affect reliability and can result in collapses, fatalities, and inefficient operations
  
• Increased mobility from urbanization and growing population will force capacity challenges and increased business demand
  
• Technology and data changes how to operate e.g., sensors, data analytics and automation enable better planning and optimized maintenance
  
• The sustainability obligation has strategic importance with new regulation and public awareness increasing

The challenges are staggering, and companies need to:

• Decrease downtime and improve maintenance outcomes – up to 40% of scheduled maintenance has negligible impact on failure. Up to 30% of maintenance activities are carried out too often, resulting in increased costs – and not focusing on the most effective use of maintenance spend
• Derive better value and insights from data – 82% of asset failures appear randomly and almost all asset data collected goes unused or not used effectively
• Meet global demand for sustainability – New and upcoming regulation, e.g., the EU CSRD and EU Taxonomy, as well as major public investments into sustainability, e.g., the US Inflation Reduction Act, provides requirements and opportunities for Civil Infrastructure within sustainability

Together with IBM, we are helping clients to address these challenges head on with Sustainable Enterprise Asset Management, which leverages our sustainability leadership position and IBM’s market leading EAM, AI and analytics capabilities.

Sustainable Enterprise Asset Management enables civil infrastructure operators to support decarbonization of asset management activities, which gives clients three distinct wins:

• Capture and structure data on Greenhouse Gas emission for Scope 1, 2 and 3
• Report according to new EU regulations from 2025
• Reduce and support continuous strategic decarbonization initiatives across the value chain

The solution can be deployed alongside any EAM solution – not just IBM Maximo. The core solution can also be readily deployed in other asset intensive industries including, but not limited to, Oil & Gas, Power & Utilities, Manufacturing and Telecom.

Sustainable Enterprise Asset Management utilizes IBM technology, including AI and Machine Learning, to enable concrete decarbonization. It focuses on three main reduction levers:

1. Simulate work orders to choose the most sustainable way to carry out a task
2. Benchmark vendors and contractors based on their green profile
3. Secure that experience and outcomes from past choices are built into future decision making

Together, EY teams and IBM deliver transformative AI and hybrid cloud solutions to build a better, more sustainable working world.

How to get started

With IBM, we have developed a six-week rapid start approach to help clients develop a compelling business case for improving sustainability, cost efficiency and maintenance effectiveness within asset management, delivering:

1. Business Value Assessment outlining priority areas to deliver maximum benefits rapidly
2. Deployment of SEAM platform to identify potential areas of reduction
3. A carbon footprint baseline on direct and indirect emissions (scope 1, 2 and 3)
4. Methodology documentation for arriving at the emission baseline in accordance with upcoming regulation and standards

To discuss this solution with your client, please contact Martin P. Lennards, Danish Government & Public Sector Leader and Nordic EY-IBM alliance leader and Matthew White, EMEIA EY-IBM alliance Business Development.