A successful sustainability journey is a team effort—one that hinges on breaking down data silos across functions to enable new digital intelligence, gain insight into trends, and support informed decision-making. Across industries, companies are increasingly adopting digitization as a powerful tool to improve environmental performance. A recent study found a strong positive relationship between companies strategically prioritizing digital technologies and their environmental performance.

In the face of mounting stakeholder pressures, the construction materials industry is looking for digital solutions to empower their sustainability journeys. Despite a growing need to collect, aggregate, analyze, and report data, however, there is no single universally accepted framework or common roadmap to follow. Businesses need actionable environmental insights to meet sustainability goals, but current methods of gathering and leveraging data are often manual and time-consuming, requiring specialized expertise.

Digitization can help leaders in the construction materials industry harness and deliver data that’s consistent, investor-grade, accurate, timely, and auditable. Here’s how:

• • Invest in digital strategies and solutions to enhance data collection and reporting: The collection of quality data is the foundation of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting, but for many companies data collection and centralization is still largely a manual process, one that involves gathering a mix of qualitative and quantitative information. This can be a roadblock in the sustainability journey for construction materials firms. In fact, one in five (21%) say data collection systems or poor data quality is either the “most significant” or a “very significant” challenge to their ESG reporting workflows, according to a recent survey we commissioned independent research firm Verdantix to conduct of executives across the construction materials sector in North America. A further 61% of respondents see data collection as a significant obstacle, making it a key priority for the near term.

With an increase in regulated disclosure and heightened pressure from customers, it is becoming more and more important for firms to establish an enterprise-wide ESG information architecture that enables them to produce investor-grade data. Our survey uncovered that business leaders are weighing their options for a range of decarbonization workflows, including commercial software offerings, in-house-developed tools, and third-party service providers. While 42% of firms rely on internally developed software or spreadsheets for climate/sustainability reporting, large firms tend to have more mature software strategies. Because selecting a software vendor can be a lengthy and complicated process that often requires significant financial investment, firms need to undertake a structured evaluation process when doing so.

• • Create a plan to overcome the resourcing constraints that get in the way of creating ESG reports: Manual data collection and centralization efforts are a labor-intensive drain on sustainability professionals. That makes resources constraints the “most significant” or a “very significant” challenge for 62% of construction materials firms attempting to comply with sustainability reporting frameworks. Firms can look to contract external expertise to augment their bandwidth, ensuring that they have the resources in place to turn sustainability reporting from a siloed activity into a team sport. They can reduce the amount of extra help they need by deploying a system that standardizes the data collection and aggregation process, reducing the time and effort needed to obtain data.

• • Close any skill gaps: With a continuously evolving reporting landscape and a lack of a single, universally accepted global reporting standard, expertise gaps can be a major obstacle for construction materials firms. Reporting requirements are wide-ranging and can be local, national or international; mandatory or voluntary. While managing and digitizing data for performance tracking and decision-making is a top challenge in meeting decarbonization objectives, it’s also becoming more important to firms’ financials as well. Firms are facing new potential climate disclosure rules like the one proposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and two recently finalized climate bills by the state of California, which will significantly increase the reporting requirements placed on businesses. Companies will need to overhaul information systems to provide accurate and robust climate-related information in their audited financial statements, and they will need the expertise to do so.

It’s a complex landscape; one that’s difficult to navigate due to a considerable talent shortage in green skills. Nearly 60% of firms cite a lack of reporting standards expertise as the “most significant” or a “very significant” challenge. Without sufficient expertise, staying up to date and in compliance with the requirements of new standards presents significant difficulty, as they require a deep understanding of sustainability concepts and metrics as well as expertise in data management.

Sustainability reporting also requires input from many departments and employees across the organization. If your firm doesn’t have the resources in-house to stay on top of reporting requirements and ongoing changes, consider leveraging an external consultant who not only specializes in decarbonization strategy and regulatory compliance, but who also has expertise to deliver right-sized digital solutions to meet your sustainability reporting objectives. Many firms are finding that an outside partner can deliver the expertise needed to ensure accurate and timely reporting. In fact, ESG reporting is one of the top areas expected to experience the greatest increase in consulting spend, according to our survey.

Firms can also use technology or data collection and reporting to help reduce the number of skilled employees needed and help retain knowledge when employees leave the company.

The construction materials industry stands at a critical juncture in its sustainability journey, one made all the more complex by the lack of industry norms and universally accepted global standards. Digitization of data can help shine a light on the path forward. To move decarbonization forward while complying with voluntary frameworks and mandatory reporting standards, companies must be willing to invest in digital strategies and take the steps needed to ensure that they’re staffed up with the right people—with the right expertise—to not only meet the reporting demands of today but also pave the way for a more sustainable future.

For more in-depth discussion on decarbonization strategies, join our complimentary on-demand webinar, From Ambition to Action: Overcoming Decarbonization Hurdles in Construction Materials, as our panel of experts provides a deep dive perspective on Trinity’s latest commissioned research on sustainable decarbonization outcomes and challenges when implementing decarbonization strategies.