Coaching a Client Through the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) Process

A building materials manufacturing company was struggling to compete without an EPD for its product given the emphasis by building constructors on LEED points accessible for products with EPD’s.

Approach:
First-time EPD development for a company can be challenging. Part of the challenge is that an EPD drives the need for data that many companies have never needed before, and the data is used to estimate parameters that have never been important to companies before. JBE created a data collection template for our client, and partnered with them to work though it on a line-by-line basis. We helped them identify and resolve numerous places where the volume into a manufacturing stage did not line up with the estimated volume leaving that process. This new method reduced the client’s anxiety over data collection, and helped ensure approval by reviewers.

Impact:
Our efforts partnering with the client to resolve stage-by-stage volume balances resulted in the reviewers approving our findings on the first pass. This reduced the total time to complete the EPD and allowed our client to leverage it quickly for buyer LEED points.

Minimizing the time it took to get an approved EPD was particularly important for this client, because they are based in California, and an EPD was critical to sell their product for municipal or LEED projects. The EPD allowed them to increase their competitive advantage and improve their bottom line.