ProjectPay wins grant to develop new embodied carbon emissions tracking tool on construction project payments platforms.

Global start-up Building and Construction industry payments platform ProjectPay has won an Innovate UK grant to develop a new embodied carbon emissions tracking tool on construction projects, to implement into their existing payments platform.

The ConstructZero IUK project is aimed at linking in embodied carbon measurements with project supply chain payments. This incentivises contractors to reduce carbon emissions on projects or pay to offset them.

With Project investors increasingly requesting ESG has been delivered on projects they are funding, ProjectPay provides a tool for project owners and their supply chains to comply and provide transparency. This allows investors and contractors to understand their carbon emissions and supply chain payment practices.

“Ethical payment practices have long been a problem in the construction sector,” said ProjectPay’s CEO, Louise Stewart. “But the suggested fix of using project bank accounts has faced endless resistance due to the heavy admin nature of bank provided accounts.  These place heavy constraints on how large contractors can spend money that has been paid to them to pass on to subcontractors who have done the work.”

ProjectPay has digitised the setup of project accounts integrated with Lloyds Bank and linked them to the entire contractor supply chain in a digital requesting and approval process. This manages payments at all levels via digital project accounts. The business recently transitioned to a full payment platform, providing funding of supply chain project accounts against approved invoices so contractors are paid quickly.

The main objective for the grant is to identify calculators or tools that can be used to implement into the current platform. These will track and measure carbon emissions generated from supply chain construction activities in line with international protocols and accounting standards.

The project addresses the requirement for ESG compliance from project investors’ to demonstrate project’s carbon measurement, reporting and offsetting alongside ethical payment practices.

ConstructZero will be added to the existing platform on a subscription revenue model.