Michael Stevns
June 17, 2025
Designing with purpose: How the Carbon Management Framework empowers engineers
Carbon is a growing priority in infrastructure development — but clear guidance is often missing. The Carbon Management Framework helps engineers turn ambition into action with a practical, structured approach.
Every infrastructure project starts with questions.
What’s the right solution for this site? How do we balance cost, resilience, timelines - and now more than ever - carbon? Where do we even begin?
For engineers, planners, and designers, these questions aren’t theoretical. They are the reality of day-to-day work where projects must meet evolving technical, environmental, and social demands — often within fragmented value chains, tight budgets, and timelines that leave little room for iteration. And when it comes to carbon, even those with the best intentions can feel like they’re operating without a map.
Carbon management is often needed, expected, and even legislated for — but rarely structured in a way that feels actionable or aligned. That’s the gap the FIDIC Carbon Management Framework (CMF) was created to fill. It’s not just another guideline — it’s a practical tool built by and for practitioners across the infrastructure sector, offering structure, clarity, and shared language in a space that’s long felt uncertain.
The problem we’ve all felt: Ambition without a framework
It’s now widely accepted that reducing whole-life carbon in infrastructure delivers multiple benefits: it can reduce costs, futureproof assets, meet stakeholder expectations, and make projects more attractive to investors. But doing it consistently and effectively has remained elusive.
That’s because carbon sits across a project’s lifecycle, but rarely with a single accountable owner. Sustainability managers might hold the knowledge, but engineers make the design choices. Clients set targets, but procurement decisions often dilute them. Without a common approach, teams default to what’s familiar. And what’s familiar often emits more carbon than we can afford.
A collaborative effort, led from within the industry
Recognising the need for a shared and practical framework, FIDIC’s Global Leadership Forum (GLF) made decarbonisation a top priority in 2023. What followed was a sector-wide initiative, driven by consultation and co-creation with global leaders in engineering, design, and sustainability.
Ramboll has been at the heart of this effort from day one. Through the active involvement of our sustainability specialists, engineers, and leadership team — including Group CEO Jens-Peter Saul — we helped shape the direction, structure, and ambition of the CMF. Our teams contributed knowledge, facilitated workshops, and shared lessons from practice to ensure the framework would be grounded in the realities of project delivery.
“All infrastructure sectors account for over 70% of total carbon emissions worldwide. So, the engineering and consulting industry has the responsibility and opportunity of helping to significantly reduce this impact.”
What the carbon management framework offers
The CMF provides action-oriented guidance — not just recommendations, but a pathway forward. It’s structured around seven core components that can be embedded in the DNA of project delivery:
- Leadership and accountability
- Carbon assessment
- Baselines and targets
- Driving carbon reductions
- Collaboration
- Procurement
- Continual improvement
Each component is supported by clearly defined maturity levels, from “Acknowledging” to “Pioneering”. This makes the CMF flexible: you don’t need to be a leader in low-carbon design to use it — you just need to be ready to start. If your team is still building awareness, the framework helps you identify where carbon sits and what actions can be taken. If your team is already embedding carbon into decision-making, the CMF helps benchmark and amplify that progress.
Engineering better outcomes
We know that infrastructure projects with lower whole-life carbon stem from better engineering — and better decision-making. They often lead to more cost-effective asset management and make projects more attractive to investors focused on climate finance.
Yet in many places, there is little precedent, few carbon regulations, and variable technical maturity in the supply chain. The CMF is built to help projects leapfrog these barriers. It promotes a mindset shift, from managing what we can measure to measuring what we want to manage, unlocking innovation and value along the way.
“The Carbon Management Framework is more than a policy tool — it’s a practical guide engineers can use to navigate complexity with confidence. It helps us align design choices with climate targets, quantify emissions early, and make better decisions across the asset lifecycle. For anyone working on infrastructure today, this is about designing not just for performance, but for impact.”
Collaboration as the multiplier
Carbon is not something one person, or even one organisation, can manage alone. That's why collaboration is central to the CMF. The framework helps teams shift from “handover” thinking — where carbon is passed from stage to stage — to shared responsibility, where each actor in the value chain contributes meaningfully.
• Clients are supported to set meaningful ambitions and embed them into procurement
• Designers are empowered to bring low-carbon alternatives to the table
• Contractors and suppliers are included early and given the right incentives
• Sustainability experts are integrated into the design and decision-making — not added as an afterthought
It’s this collaborative model that turns ambition into action — and allows carbon to be seen as a design parameter, not just a reporting line.
For any geography, any team, any stage
One of the most important features of the CMF is its global applicability. Infrastructure projects face different constraints and opportunities across markets. In some, carbon reduction is tightly legislated; in others, it’s barely acknowledged. But every project has an opportunity to do better — and the CMF is built to meet teams at any point on the curve.
It supports emerging markets in leapfrogging carbon-intensive practices and gives more mature markets a tool to embed consistency and drive systems-level transformation.
An invitation to act
The Carbon Management Framework is currently in global beta testing. FIDIC and its partners, including Ramboll, are gathering feedback to refine and scale its impact. If you're part of a project team navigating the complexity of carbon — this is your opportunity to help shape a tool designed for the realities you face. Because the future won’t be engineered by accident — it will be engineered by design.
Want to know more?
Elina Kalliala
Sustainability Director, Transport
+358 50 5111866
Andreas Linnet
Senior Chief Consultant
+45 51 61 82 34