LafargeHolcim presents integrated road services at Abu Dhabi World Road Congress
LafargeHolcim is presenting its advanced integrated road offer at the Abu Dhabi World Road Congress with a focus on ORIS, a new digital service that helps optimize road design through a smarter use of locally sourced natural resources and materials. Using these new services can enable road infrastructure to become 50 percent less CO2-intensive while improving costs significantly. Beyond innovative pavement solutions, road structures, special binders or construction material services, LafargeHolcim will also introduce COPave in Abu Dhabi, a carbon calculator dedicated to roads that can accurately forecast any project impact in its actual environment. The World Road Congress, held from October 6 to 10, 2019 is organized every four years and brings together government authorities, road and transport administrations and organizations, academics, as well as solutions providers.
Nicolas Miravalls, Head of Roads: “The road infrastructure market accounts for more than CHF 550 billion worldwide. LafargeHolcim’s game-changing digital solutions are further strengthening our integrated road offer and will become key drivers for our infrastructure business. The optimization of road designs and material use are significant enablers to improve sustainability in road infrastructure. The choice of road design, and material sourcing have massive impacts on the costs, carbon footprint, durability and safety. That is why developing intelligent and integrated road solutions is a priority for LafargeHolcim.”
700,000 kilometers of roads are built every year around the world making road transportation a major source of carbon emissions worldwide, representing around 18 percent of global emissions. Because each road is unique, it is a complex challenge to define the most sustainable and cost effective solutions adapted to their local resources environment.
Going beyond traditional solutions with two new digital services
With ORIS and COPave LafargeHolcim is now launching two specific services at the World Road Congress that have the potential to significantly improve the way roads are built today.
ORIS is the world’s first digital material platform. Based on LafargeHolcim’s global knowledge of construction materials, and powered by artificial intelligence and digital platform, ORIS helps assess road designs at a very early stage with a holistic view including both the construction and maintenance phases of road projects. Thanks to a powerful algorithm, ORIS supports road investors, owners and designers in properly estimating their project impacts, analyze local natural resources, optimize construction budgets, increase sustainability and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Initial tests show that when using ORIS costs for road projects can be reduced by up to 30 percent while cutting their carbon footprint by up to half. At the same time the durability of these projects using ORIS can be increased three-fold.
The second service to be presented in Abu Dhabi is COPave, a life-cycle assessment (LCA) software specifically dedicated to roads. Developed within two years at the company’s global Innovation Center in Lyon, France, it will allow road contractors to evaluate precisely the environmental footprint of their roads and enable them be made as carbon-efficient as possible. COPave covers data from five continents and is a collaborative integrated service that can be used for new road projects but also maintenance programs. COPave has been assessed and recommended by the BRE (Building Research Establishment) in the UK for the quality of its analysis.
LafargeHolcim is involved in several road projects in over 40 countries worldwide. The company has contributed to important road infrastructure over the past years, such as the Edmonton Ring Road in Canada, Sokna motorway in Egypt and the S5 expressway in Poland, and is currently delivering a major paving project on the A14 in Cambridge UK.
To find out more about LafargeHolcim’s unique perspective on sustainability in the building materials industry, make sure you subscribe to Material Talks for cutting-edge technology, breakthrough innovation and pioneering achievements that will make the built environment more sustainable.
About LafargeHolcim
LafargeHolcim is the global leader in building materials and solutions. We are active in four business segments: Cement, Aggregates, Ready-Mix Concrete and Solutions & Products.
With leading positions in all regions of the world and a balanced portfolio between developing and mature markets, LafargeHolcim offers a broad range of high-quality building materials and solutions. LafargeHolcim experts solve the challenges that customers face around the world, whether they are building individual homes or major infrastructure projects. Demand for LafargeHolcim materials and solutions is driven by global population growth.
