Photo: Studio-E

The eight-story buildings contain 59 one and two-bedroom apartments, all with balconies. In addition, there is a large laundry on the ground floor of each building and two commercial premises. The two-story buildings each have four apartments. The ground floor apartments have terraces, while the others have balconies. All four buildings has been constructed with an environmental profile and with, for example, sedum roofs and solar cells.

Pilot project for climate-smart construction

At first sight, this looks like any other construction project. But the fact is that the residential units, have been built with 40-percent lower climate impact during the construction period than an average residential project.

To challenge the industry, the customer, Helsingborgshem, sought a partner that had both a clear strategy to ensure a lower climate impact and a cost-effective offering. This was achieved by weighting the tender at 80 percent based on price and 20 percent on climate impact, which proved to be a good distribution, since NCC had both the lowest price and the lowest climate impact.

The structure of the tender entailed that the contractors were given the opportunity to be creative and to think outside the box regarding choice of frame, production methods and schedule, while the design of the building, including layout, choice of materials and structure, for example, was set.

40-percent lower climate impact

“To achieve as low a climate impact as possible, we chose an in-situ cast frame, with a slim design and less steel reinforcement. We also chose to use a concrete with lower climate impact than conventional concrete,” says Johan Eriksson, Site Manager at NCC.

The concrete used is called “klimatförbättrad betong” (concrete with reduced climate impact) and the reduction in carbon emissions is 40 percent for most of the concrete supplied to this project.