Global adoption of the International Cost Management Standards (ICMS) 3rd edition grows

A world first for cost and carbon management, from concept to completion and beyond, the 3^rd edition of the International Cost Management Standards (ICMS) benefits all built environment stakeholders who wish to reduce carbon cost-effectively for compliance, market, and societal reasons and drive innovation in low carbon designs and solutions.

RICS, as part of the ICMS Coalition, worked with 50 globally prominent professional bodies to deliver ICMS 3^rd edition, bringing much needed transparency and cross-border comparability through a consistent taxonomy for life cycle costs and carbon emissions for built assets.

Since its launch in 2021, ICMS 3^rd edition has empowered professionals to use a globally consistent framework for classifying, defining, recording, analysing, presenting, and comparing life cycle cost and carbon across assets, from buildings and bridges to ports and offshore structures. It has been adopted and supported globally by various government bodies, international firms, and professional institutions, such as the Task Force for Climate Financial Disclosures (TCFD), National Highways, Infrastructure Ontario, State of Qatar, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the Global Infrastructure Hub.

Recent adoptions

A significant recent adoption of ICMS has been from the Irish Government, which announced forthcoming amendments to its suite of Public Works Contracts. The announcement was made jointly by Paschal Donohoe TD, Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, and Ossian Smyth T.D., Minister of State responsible for Public Procurement and eGovernment.

In a statement, Minister Smyth said, "The reporting structure provided by ICMS will enable decisions to be taken on the basis of the total cost of ownership including the environmental impacts of decisions with respect to material selection, foundation design and energy use and production. Combined with the data handling capacity of BIM and the availability of greater levels of information on materials and building components, contracting authorities and their project teams can review a project's environmental standing at all stages of its delivery lifecycle with ICMS. The information recorded can be used in the lifecycle of the asset to support decisions around sustainability and the circular economy."

Charles Mitchell FSCSI FRICS, Senior Quantity Surveyor/Construction Adviser, Office of Government Procurement, Government of Ireland, said, "As a member of the ICMS Standard Setting Committee, it is rewarding to see this significant announcement by the Government of Ireland to use ICMS for a package of contract reforms to build confidence in program delivery."

Building Transparency, the developer of the embodied carbon calculation tool called EC3 (Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator), recently announced the availability of ICMS 3^rd edition in their tool. Users can now classify their estimates using Levels 2 and 3 of the ICMS 3^rd edition and also produce ICMS reports directly from EC3. Building Transparency is a non-profit started with the initial support of om Microsoft, MKA Foundation, Charles Pankow Foundation, Interface, Skanska USA, and the Carbon Leadership Forum. EC3 has over 35,000 users from over 30 countries with over 115,000 EPDs.

Simultaneously Autodesk announced the availability of ICMS in their globally used Autodesk Construction Cloud, a cloud-based construction management software. With the Autodesk Construction Cloud integration, quantity surveyors and cost managers can compare carbon impacts with costing data following ICMS 3^rd edition.