The Green Construction Board’s Low Carbon Concrete Group, working with industry, has helped to create and develop a BSI Flex Standard for Lower Carbon Concrete.
The release of BSI Flex 350 V1.0:2023-10 marks a significant step towards decarbonisation of the concrete sector. Traditional standards may take up to 5 years to publish and around 18 months to 2 years for revisions and updates, however, the BSI Flex Standard approach allows for a new and quicker response to the ever fast changing environmental challenges we face globally. The publication of the Flex 350 – Alternative binder systems for lower carbon concrete has taken 10 months to develop, review and publish by a team of dedicated industry professionals from the construction industry with Dr James Aldred as the Technical Author. Version 1.0 of BSI Flex 350 is available for download now and is open for comment via the Standards Development Portal. BSI and the Advisory Group for the Flex 350 will continue to monitor and review any comments and make changes to the specification should it be required. This flexibility to make informed and timely changes, will help the industry keep pace with new and emerging cement and concrete technology, thus removing a significant barrier to innovation.
The Flex 350 V1.0:2023-10 also shifts the traditional view of concrete standards from prescriptive based to a performance-based guidance document. These changes in approach to providing authoritative guidance for new and alternative binder systems do not reduce the thresholds for acceptance of an alternative binder systems (ABS) but does clarify the responsibilities for the supply chain when supporting innovation. This innovation is necessary in order to meet the ever-increasing demands on valuable resources whilst reducing the carbon emissions from our business-as-usual construction activities.
The BSI Flex is available to download here.
As this is a version 1, it is also available for public comment until 30th November 2023 on the standards development portal and we invite you to leave any comments here.
The feedback at this stage is vital for the development of version 2 of the BSI Flex.
