Sellen Construction aggregates and discloses ESG-related data with a low-code app template for BuildingGreen's Contractor’s Commitment.
Industry: ConstructionApp template: Carbon Accounting and Contractors Commitment ESG Reporting
Introducing Sellen Construction
Sellen is one of the leading general contractors in the Pacific Northwest. Locally owned and operated for nearly 80 years, Sellen is consistently ranked among the top contractors by volume in the region by the Puget Sound Business Journal. Its clients include leaders in healthcare, life science, technology, hospitality, speculative development, and arts and culture.
Sellen is committed to the long-term health of our community and the global ecosystem. It was one of the first general contractors to join the USGBC, a founding member of both Seattle 2030 and Bellevue 2030, and was one of the first signatories to BuildingGreen’s Contractor’s Commitment for the pilot year. The company has helped champion sustainable practices in the construction industry for more than 20 years and continues to implement innovative, environmentally friendly policies on its job sites throughout the Puget Sound region.
Introducing BuildingGreen
Construction firms around the world actively participate within organizations or consortiums dedicated to a more sustainable tomorrow. BuildingGreen, an organization active in sustainability in the built environment since 1985, has become a trusted source for guidance on healthy and sustainable products and strategies, supporting professionals with knowledge, guidance, CEUs, and industry news via BuildingGreen.com and LEEDuser.com.
In 2021, BuildingGreen launched a new initiative called the Contractor’s Commitment, which calls on construction firms to practice sustainable building practices on the job site and beyond. The initiative requires builders to report data within the following categories:
Carbon
Jobsite Wellness
Waste Management
Water Management
Materials
Contractor’s Commitment signatories collaborate to share best practices, lessons learned, and innovative solutions to advance sustainability in construction. Joining the Contractor’s Commitment requires builders to track and self-report carbon emissions data, which can include scopes 1, 2, and 3 and subcontractor data as well.
The Challenge
After Sellen joined the Contractor’s Commitment, the company was tracking vast quantities of data to fulfill reporting requirements. The primary challenges, similar to many builders, were manual processes and data aggregation from both internal and external sources. To gather and aggregate information, Sellen was using ERP systems, PDFs, spreadsheets and smart forms. Ad-hoc solutions like these are very common, yet ultimately inefficient for many ESG and sustainability data collection efforts. These data sets are highly complex, featuring multiple tabs and tiers of information, and they don’t have the degree of professionalism firms like Sellen want to present to their subcontractors, partners and potential clients.
Sellen required an application to accelerate a data-driven future in a flexible manner. In addition to carbon accounting, Contractor’s Commitment requires industry-specific performance tracking and benchmarking that no other ESG platform could accommodate. Capturing and reporting this data in an efficient and timely manner was not possible with existing off-the-shelf solutions. With a vision of where sustainability disclosures and ESG requirements are heading for the construction industry, Sellen sought a platform that could provide on-demand insights into current sustainability frameworks with the ability to fluidly expand to incorporate increased ESG data and metrics as requirements and aspirations evolve.
The Solution
To solve those challenges, Sustaira and Sellen worked closely to define and create a custom, low-code app template solution that can integrate with other data sources, including other Sustaira applications in the future. By starting with a custom solution, Sustaira was able to move Sellen from complex spreadsheets like those used by many Contractor’s Commitment participants and put it into a professional, easy to use, online application now known as the Sustaira Contractor’s Commitment module.
Sustaira built the application with Siemens’ low-code platform Mendix, which required only a few months to build compared to the more traditional routes, which can take years. The Sustaira Contractor’s Commitment module is designed to enable any Contractor’s Commitment signatory or other builder looking to align with the framework to easily track and report sustainability data.
The focus of the app’s design was two-fold:
The ability to efficiently configure the app to align with the requirements and update them as they evolve.
Integration with other Sustaira apps for cross-referencing data already entered elsewhere.
First, the team addressed the need for periodic updates requiring minimal oversight by Sustaira. As the administrator of the application, Sellen annually configures templates that align with the current version of the Contractor’s Commitment, which they can then share with other signatories or companies licensed with the app and use for reporting. The administrator can set categories, sub-categories, tiered levels, units of measurement, and different certifications that may be needed at each location, and even create their own question bank to ensure that they are gathering the appropriate information.
Next, Sellen and Sustaira set their sights on building a system that could help avoid duplicative efforts. For this, it was essential that carbon accounting data (and other ESG data stored in Sustaira’s platform in the future) did not need to be manually re-entered in the Contractor’s Commitment app. The Contractor’s-Commitment-to-Carbon-Accounting application integration allows data to travel between the applications automatically and avoids the duplication or manual data entry that would be needed otherwise. Enabling this improved flow of information through the user-defined configuration platform streamlined both the annual configuration and reporting processes for Sellen.
Sellen created its first-ever Sustainability Report in 2023, pulling vast amounts of data from job sites throughout the company with the help of this tool. The report focuses on Sellen’s performance within each facet of the Contractor’s Commitment and details how the data will inform the company’s work in the coming years. Sustaira’s Contractor’s Commitment app expedited the reporting process and will be a useful tool for annual updates to Sellen’s Sustainability Report.
The Contractor’s Commitment application is now part of Sustaira’s full Sustainability and ESG App platform and is one of many applications that users have access to as part of their ESG launchpad. The Sustaira launchpad acts as a single source for all of an organization’s sustainability and ESG data and is tailored to their needs. The Contractor’s Commitment application can be added to an organization’s launchpad along with other Sustaira low-code building block applications, such as Carbon Accounting and Sustainability and ESG Goals & KPI tracking.
Features & Functionality:
Flexible framework to create or customize categories, sub-categories, tiers, or units of measurement
Measure, track, and report location/asset-specific information
Ability to create custom questions and question banks
User-friendly application that helps gather pertinent ESG and sustainability information
Integration with other data sources, including Sustaira’s Carbon Accounting application
“The app development process was truly collaborative. The partnership Sellen and Sustaira established enabled us to look at our data in a more holistic manner while complying with the specific requirements of the Contractor’s Commitment. The flexibility of the app will help us implement necessary updates in the years to come as Sellen and our peers continue to build a more sustainable construction industry.” – Angi Rivera, Director of Sustainability, Sellen Construction.”
Equipped with this tool, Sellen’s teams have quick, easy access to job site data from in-progress projects, minimizing manual processes and spreadsheets previously used to aggregate data and measure results.
This forward-thinking platform will help Sellen and fellow leaders in the sustainable construction arena grow as they navigate their sustainability journey. The user-friendly space, where Sellen can get a holistic view of its sustainability progress, will enable Sellen to continue to be a leader in sustainable construction and share best practices for sustainability and ESG with its peers to help push the construction industry forward.
Delivered Value:
Agile application dedicated to tracking site-specific emissions
Reduced dependency on spreadsheets and manual processes
Professional, simple application dedicated to aggregating information that adheres to the guidelines of the Contractor’s Commitment
Live insights to sustainability and ESG impacts across all categories and subcategories of job sites
Alignment with Contractor’s Commitment Requirements
Expedited delivery
App template which can be modified and extended
Potential to integrate with back-end systems, including Procore
Improved operational efficiency and error mitigation with ESG data collection
“The flexibility of Sustaira’s platform provides a robust solution and centralizes sustainability reporting challenges for companies of any size,” said Jenny Moshea, Sellen’s Chief Information Officer. “In partnering with Sustaira’s development team, we have created an application to accelerate a data-driven future.”
