Tony Gee and Partners is delighted, and honoured, to announce that it has become a Corporate Partner of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE).

In signing the Partnership memorandum at the Institution on 30th November 2022, ICE Director of Membership Sean Harris said “we are delighted to welcome Tony Gee to our band of Corporate Partners. The company has been involved with the Institution for many years and this position recognises its forward-thinking approach to the development of their staff and the exciting opportunities that it can offer them.”

The document was also signed by Tony Gee Executive Managing Director, Chris Young who commented on the honour of being invited to join this group by noting “this is really testament to the hard work of everyone in the company who support others to achieve their professional aspirations and to those who give so much of their time to the Institution. The ICE is at the forefront of getting the right messages out there about how civil engineering must contribute to global issues and we are fully on-board with supporting this.”

Corporate partners work closely with ICE to enhance the professional development of their employees and benefit from a range of ICE and civil engineering events and activities.

The aim of the Partnership scheme is to deliver added value to established relationships between ICE and employers. It will reinforce the strategic nature of the relationship, enhancing foresight and forward planning, improving outcomes for both partners. In particular, the partnership will build on well established practice in professional development and will seek to reinforce the relevance and uptake of ICE professional development and activities.

There are currently thirteen Corporate Partners of the ICE. Tony Gee becomes the fourteenth.

Tony Gee's 2020 carbon emissions footprint has been externally verified and certified as Carbon Neutral.

Tony Gee’s 2020 carbon emissions footprint has been externally verified and certified as Carbon Neutral. Alongside this, with a view to future proof their carbon emissions going forward, Tony Gee has also introduced an annual carbon investment to ensure that their operational emissions each year are offset. This practise will continue at a fixed rate over time with the view of achieving a carbon negative status as their processes and supply chain carbon emissions are better defined and targeted for reduction.

Tony Gee’s 2020 carbon emissions footprint has been externally verified and certified as Carbon Neutral by Carbon Footprint Ltd

In 2019 Tony Gee signed up to the Pledge to Net Zero campaign and they have been developing their operational carbon monitoring capabilities in house since.

To take their work to the next level they have had their stated emissions externally verified. Working with Carbon Footprint Ltd, they firstly had their measurement tool and methodology verified, and then they went through a process of checking their monitored data to validate their stated emissions. This has now been completed and Tony Gee has an externally verified operational carbon footprint. They then purchased high quality carbon offsets to cover the emissions for the year.

Tony Gee’s assessments to date do not yet include commuting and the emissions associated with working from home. However, they have started to estimate these and are planning to bring this into their reported emissions in future years as they move to more hybrid working.

Tony Gee has also been engaged with their upwards supply chain and have reported these figures to clients that accounted for over half of their 2020 turnover to help them with their foot printing exercises. Tony Gee is committed to helping their upwards supply chain and will provide the data to all clients when they require it.

Chris Young, Executive Managing Director, said:
“Climate change is almost certainly the biggest threat we have ever faced and as a business we are proud to have signed up to the pledge to net zero. Signing up is only the first stage though so it is great see that we are already making positive steps to reduce and offset our own carbon footprint.

I also offer up the invitation to our clients, these internal company measures and targets are a good first step for Tony Gee but the impact of our designs will dwarf any savings we make to our own company emission, so if you think our designs are not addressing the issues or we could do better on sustainability and carbon reduction challenge us on this every time and we will work with you to make your projects better!”

Tony Gee’s verified emissions for 2020 are summarised in the below infographic. Commuting and working from home emissions are in the process of being estimated and will be included in reported figures in future years.

Tony Gee introduces an annual carbon investment going forward

Tony Gee know that carbon offsetting is not the answer to the climate emergency that the world is facing.
There is awareness that they cannot rely on offsetting to replace reducing their emissions. Tony Gee is continually striving to reduce actual emissions using the IEMA carbon reduction hierarchy as shown below in the high level Carbon Plan.
However – offsetting is widely regarded to have a positive impact if done correctly. Tony Gee has partnered with Carbon Footprint Ltd to ensure that they only purchase high quality and effective verified offsets.

The offsetting options used provide positive steps to reducing carbon. Tony Gee has therefore made the decision to commit to an annual ‘carbon investment’ per employee of 2 tonnes CO2e. This quantity has been based on an amount sufficient to offset our predicted carbon footprint, as well as provide additional investment in carbon mitigations going forwards.

The intention of this is to firstly offset Tony Gee’s operational emissions each year (running offices, business travel, WFH emissions and commuting). It is intended that there will then be a residual net negative offset amount left. There will be other emissions that are not yet picking up in monitoring, particularly in the supply chain, so they are hesitant to claim being carbon negative at this point.

Keeping the ‘investment’ per staff member the same year on year means that as Tony Gee reduce their absolute emissions, the gap (and the ‘carbon negative’ figure) will increase year on year, having an increasingly positive impact as time goes on. This positive impact will increase too as the business grows in size.

Tony Gee propose to apply the carbon investment across the UK and international business. This investment this will help to reduce their impact whilst work is being done to establish more reliable monitoring of international operational emissions.

This graph indicates the intention of the carbon budget plan. Tony Gee will review the investment amount periodically as their footprint assessments evolve.

Tony Gee is giving away its in-house embodied carbon calculator to small and medium size organisations throughout the construction industry to support the discussions at the COP26 climate change conference being held in Glasgow this month.

Tony Gee is giving away its in-house embodied carbon calculator to small and medium size organisations throughout the construction industry to support the discussions at the COP26 climate change conference being held in Glasgow this month.

Having grown from an SME ourselves, Tony Gee fully recognises the challenges this size organisation can face. Many smaller companies lack the time and resource to develop their own in-house tools, such as carbon calculators. The climate change emergency is too important for anybody to be left out of the conversation and having every organisation invent the same wheel to do the job of assessing carbon is an unnecessary hurdle to progress on this issue.

SMEs represent a large percentage of the industry.  The donation of the tool is intended to stimulate and sustain the carbon agenda at all levels of the industry, not just the large and well-resourced corporations. Carbon must become part of everyday business for all organisations involved in the purchasing, design and specification of products and services in the construction industry. Having a simple tool to assess carbon on even the smallest projects can support the discussion of carbon impacts in the design process, but also with clients.

To use the carbon calculator please download it using the link below and join us in working to the challenge of net zero.

The carbon calculator is provided for guidance. It is based on information freely available in the public domain. Whilst every effort has been made to assure the accuracy of the calculator, it is incumbent on the user to check their output with the source data and verify that their calculations are correct.