Using cloud for a more sustainable approach to construction
Construction accounts for 39% of global carbon emissions. Travis Perkins plc has deployed Google Cloud Platform to try and reduce emissions and better serve customers, enhancing the diversity of its data workforce on the way.
Travis Perkins plc has made a serious commitment to cutting its global emissions, and made tangible progress against the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) it announced in 2021. This progress takes the form of a cut in scope 1 and 2 emissions of 35% on the 2020 baseline.
This is a positive development considering that the built environment generates nearly two fifths of global carbon emissions. But the company, which is the UKs largest distributor of building materials, also signed up to reduce scope 3 emissions by 63% by 2035, and therefore needs to reduce supply chain and downstream emissions.
"As a leader in the industry, we see it as our responsibility to help our customers and suppliers to reduce the carbon footprint in our supply chain so we can help build better communities," says Stephen Harris, Director of Finance Operations at the Group.
To support this strategy, the Group has developed a data-driven approach and implemented a new target operating model for enabling the central team to support data teams across Travis Perkins plc brands. This has helped to modernise the business by improving its focus on customer insights, empowering colleagues to work more efficiently and really kickstarting decarbonisation.
Establishing a single version of the truth
The first step on this journey was to gather and organise the Group's existing data effectively to provide a consistent and reliable data source. At the time, in common with many distributed organisations, Travis Perkins plc's data was fragmented, with each business unit in the Group gathering and using data independently, and multiple versions of the truth being used for decision making.
Stephen Harris comments: "There was inconsistency even across terminology. A single version of the truth was missing. As a result, we probably spent 80% of our time getting to the right analysis and then 20% applying it to a business decision when it should have been the other way around."
Rob Barbour, Group Data and Insights Director at Travis Perkins plc, realised that if the company was going to use data to modernise successfully, it would need to change its architecture.
"Before we even looked at the tech, we did a Group data strategy back in 2021," he explains. "We sat down with the leadership and interviewed 40 colleagues from C suite right to branch level. We came back with three focus areas. One was around building trusted foundations and data. The other one was building the right skills, and then becoming much more focused on the customer using data insights."
To build those trusted data foundations, Barbour and team launched a detailed technical review process, comparing all the visualisation tools both architecturally and on what the company wanted to achieve with the democratisation of data. Google Data Cloud was the winning solution. With Google's data platform, including BigQuery and Looker, the team was able to build the unified, consistent, meta-data-driven data warehouse that was needed to give employees actionable insights in real-time.
"Looker's semantic layer and the Google data catalogue allow us to have that single version of the truth that anyone in the business can access and use in a governed way," explains Barbour. "And because Looker is browser-based, I can just add someone's email and they can access it straight away. In terms of our BigQuery pipelines, we utilise metadata-driven programming. This has increased our pipeline speed to market by 800%, and developer upskilling takes just a few days. This has enabled us to act on data insights very quickly, rather than taking months."
Better data for reduced emissions
Travis Perkins plc is now able to use BigQuery and Looker to analyse and report on the carbon emissions on different parts of its supply chain where the data is available. Not only does this fit in with the business's goal of becoming more sustainable but it's also enabling a focus on operational efficiencies.
Barbour uses carbon data to help ensure that Travis Perkins plc lowers its own emissions:
"We set up what we call delivery efficiency reporting, where branch managers across a number of our brands were getting a personalised report showing them which deliveries could have been done more efficiently, and therefore should have been transferred to a different branch. This has led to a 4% improvement in efficiency within months," he says.
Meanwhile, reporting on fuel receipts and delivery miles has helped the Group to lower fuel costs, while reducing carbon emissions from deliveries.
"Travis Perkins plc believes greater transparency is key to driving climate action, and so data and reporting helps us to promote a better culture for decarbonisation within our own business and in the industry more widely," says Barbour. "We are working with suppliers and customers to reduce supply chain emissions."
Travis Perkins plc has also been using Google Carbon Footprint to measure the carbon impact of running queries in BigQuery itself, and subsequently improving practice.
"In the Looker marketplace there's a carbon calculator which plugs into the system data which shows carbon information. We're still working through and trialling it but it helps us to realize the impact of writing queries. If I write an intensive or poor practice query that's going to drive more intensity on the box and therefore drive more cost and more carbon."
Diverse data skills
Mindful of the skills that would be needed to optimise this investment in a centralised data platform, Travis Perkins plc also set up a data academy in 2021. Nearly 40% of the first-year group of apprentices are women - a proportion significantly higher than the industry average. What is particularly interesting, is that when seeking an apprenticeship partner and looking for recruits to the scheme, Travis Perkins plc didn't lead with a gender ratio target.
"We created an environment, made it open to all and targeted at every level. We've got people in warehouses, working in the supply chain and warehouse on the data apprenticeship because they use data every day. We've got people in head office functions doing the data apprenticeship, and we've even got people in branches."
The apprenticeship varies from the basic data literacy level which assumes very limited knowledge, progressing through reporting levels to more advanced skills involving Python and then more visualisation right through to advanced data science.
Although Travis Perkins plc doesn't lead with a diversity target when recruiting apprentices, a spokesperson did confirm that the apprenticeship boosts the overall diversity of its workforce. Barbour emphasises that the creation of an inclusive environment for data apprentices benefits both employer and apprentice.
"We also partnered with the Women in Data (WiD) movement," Barbour says, "and they've been really helpful. With their support, we've set up an internal Woman in Data network where we work together to create an enabling environment. We attend WiD events and as a Women in Data ally, I lead from the front and make sure that we give all our colleagues in data opportunities to present their great work and create a positive environment, and I see an increase in data innovation across the Group as a result."
As Travis Perkins plc continues to use data to modernise and introduces more colleagues and functions to its data reporting tools, Barbour is looking forward to welcoming another cohort of data apprentices very soon.
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