Same Basis provides verification and council-wide data analysis that enable consistent whole-life carbon policy. With in-built flexibility to tailor to any authority context, and the robustness to present comparable outcomes at committee.
Actions are designed to be simple and intuitive, for both project level verification and authority-wide oversight. Saves verification time to achieve consistent assessment. Enables management and evidence base generation.
Whole-life carbon covers a building’s full emissions footprint: the embodied carbon locked in at construction, operational energy use, and end-of-life disposal.
The highest impact decisions on carbon emissions are made at early stage designs, making planning policy a critical lever for reducing emissions. Our demand isn’t slowing, and embodied emissions are being recognised as an increasingly significant share of building emissions.
Planning policies have been establishing to address these emissions. The barriers are inconsistency, greenwashing risk, resource and a steep technical learning curve. Without a verification layer, submissions arrive in different spreadsheets, on different assumptions, and decisions cannot be defended at committee or easily compared from one application to the next.
Same Basis makes policies enforceable, holding applicants accountable with minimal resources. It validates data, enables defensible decisions, and ensures comparability, simplifying robust implementation.
Select verification mode and project stage. Drop the applicant’s spreadsheet into Same Basis, the verification template then autofills. AI-assisted autofill direct from drawings is in development.
The verifier owns the project: ingest data, validate each row against ground truths and our estimates, leave evidence and overrides, and accept or reject suggestions from applicants and consultants in line. Built-in guidance up-skills officers with each use.
Clear reporting of carbon outcomes for projects. Easy committee-ready report formats. Submit updated or new information at each project stage including pre-approval, planning, pre-commencement, pre-occupation, post-completion. See data across every project in the authority.
Invite the applicant, their consultant, an in-house colleague or a third-party reviewer. Anyone you share with can comment and suggest. Only verifiers can accept those suggestions or sign off.
Every suggestion is a tracked change that can be discussed in line, captured in the project history with a robust audit trail.
Every validation shows the applicant’s entry side by side with the formula, the source for each input, and the result. Override any value with a written justification. The verifier learning with every decision.
Pull up the history of any value: who entered it, when, what it changed from, and why. Without this, policy is not enforceable. With this, committee decisions stand up at appeal.
Initial dashboard ideas — to be developed alongside councils to suit your requirements. Embodied carbon already accounts for a large and growing share of a building’s lifetime emissions; as the grid decarbonises, embodied will dominate operational over the next decade. Same Basis gives you a live view of how every project in your authority compares — and turns those projects into the evidence base for the next local plan.
Compare a project against your policy requirements and benchmarks. See element-by-element carbon comparisons across the application.
Oversight of every project across pre-approval, planning, pre-commencement, pre-occupation and post-completion stages. Clear management of verification status across the organisation.
Every project on a map. Compare to national baselines and datasets. Identify where your authority can improve, and build the case for the next local plan.
Same Basis is built on flexible verification templates. This enables you to tailor the balance between information collection, uncertainty in datasets, and reviewer time to your particular needs. We’ve built this software to work for any authority across a wide range of applications. That said, we are keen to use our expertise to work towards aligning the industry, with everyone working on the same basis.
While the initial tool covers whole life carbon, we are open to discussion about further applications. These can be easily supported through new verification templates.
There are currently three verification templates set up within Same Basis. They’re interchangeable in the same interface, so you can easily change modes. We have the ability to form new template designs quickly. The key modules of each approach can be mixed and matched to form new templates for new requirements. Let us know your thoughts on what templates would be useful for you.
An automated approach built around readily available information within design teams at early stages. The two-stage approach applies calculations and assumptions to verify the ground truth inputs and carbon values are in the right ballpark. All calculations and assumptions can be viewed and overridden by the verifier. Research-led development with review by industry disciplines including sustainability consultants, architects, facades, structural engineers, and MEP engineers.
The applicant submits the raw, readily-available values about the project. These are designed to be values design teams will know, with as few assumptions as possible. Carbon values are also submitted.
Stage 1 verification sense-checks the ground truths against rule-of-thumb and scheme-design calculations to confirm they are in the right ballpark for the project. The verifier reviews values which are shown as outside of standard ranges.
The applicant’s verified ground truth values are then taken and standard carbon factors, industry averages and methodologies are applied to produce an independent carbon estimate range. The applicant’s figures are compared against it and divergences are flagged for the verifier. Low-carbon products and innovations declared by the applicant sit alongside for the verifier to review. EPDs can be requested and submitted if required.
Rows can be defined within a template which have text for a reviewer to read, complete the verification activity, comment and sign off. This manual review might be used for qualitative reviews, or to assess the process of undertaking the carbon assessment.
A simplified, primarily data-collection mode for smaller projects or early policy maturity. The simpler process flags incomplete information and major inconsistencies, with a higher level of uncertainty remaining in the data.
Same Basis compresses verification from days of manually working through documents and seemingly endless email chains into a few hours. Reviewer time focuses on discernment and decisions, not on admin. Your team verifies applications quickly, more consistently, without compromising depth.
Every project’s data is structured, accessible and immediately comparable. Automated reports are designed for a wide range of stakeholders, at the individual project level and across the council. As projects accumulate, your evidence base builds itself. Data is easily viewed and updated with every change, meaning you save the time and cost of commissioning a review to make sense of incoherent, siloed assessments.
Technical robustness with a full history that provides a complete audit trail at every value, every override and every decision. Verifications are defensible at committee, on appeal and at inquiry. Oversight across projects and project stages — pre-approval through to post-completion — means management of the policy area remains transparent, secure and easy to resource even as scale grows.
Embodied carbon is critical to meeting our net-zero targets. Even where the same methodologies for WLCAs are required, without verification there are inconsistencies and errors across applicants’ assessments. This prevents comparison and enforceable policy. Without a digital solution, the cost of verification scales linearly, data remains trapped in inaccessible formats, and analysis is an expensive process.
Same Basis is built so that growing your verification function and technological capability does not mean replacing your tools.
Select a verification mode which works for you today. Whether that’s our automated, manual or light templates. Let us know if you have other verification template suggestions. Try out and change to other verification modes easily as your team develops.
The software is designed to be, and continue being developed to be, as automated a process as possible, with AI enabled features where appropriate. Currently, this looks like auto-fill uploads and the Ground Truth verification mode. We are developing auto-fill from planning drawings.
We’ll help train your team so the onboarding process is simple. Every row then provides information to the verifier, enabling up-skilling as they use the tool. In-built AI assistant for answering quick questions. Talk to us about any further training and support we could help with.
As technology advances and available data increases, we will continue developing the software to ever increase the ease of use. We’re keen to hear your feedback at every point to ensure Same Basis meets your needs. For example, this might look like other verification areas we can easily incorporate through our flexible template design.
Same Basis is informed by academic research, published openly by the University of Sheffield. This includes digital analysis of planning documents across every LPA in the UK, and shaped by listening in-depth to twenty-five leading authorities to understand their policy, implementation and contexts. The research then went on to develop the Ground Truth verification approach, engaging a range of industry disciplines to review what information should be collected and the calculations behind this verification method.
Separately, research into all the options surrounding embodied carbon policy was led by a member of our team for Zero Waste Scotland. This Framework will be released soon and details a ‘Building Block’ policy approach with key options and implementation, aiming to act as a toolbox for authorities developing embodied carbon policy. Get in touch to find out more.
We’re happy to arrange a call with whoever needs to be in the room — whether that’s planning, sustainability, digital, or procurement. We can discuss your needs, including trial, pricing and procurement.
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