Across Europe, the construction sector is entering a new era of mandatory sustainability governance. New regulatory frameworks are raising expectations on how organisations and governments measure, manage and disclose environmental performance over the full lifecycle of buildings and infrastructure. This is both necessary and entirely justified for a sector responsible for a significant share of global resource use and emissions.
However, new international research led by LUT University suggests that the construction sector’s current information landscape is not fit to support this emerging sustainability policy. This raises a practical question which is becoming harder to ignore: how much digitalisation is actually enough to support sustainability ambitions?
The dominant narrative has been that more digitalisation will naturally deliver better outcomes.
In policy and industry discussions alike, more detailed datasets, more advanced tools and more comprehensive reporting are often presented as the solution to sustainability challenges. Yet this latest research from LUT’s Sustainability Transformation research group suggests this view may be overly simplistic and, in some cases, counterproductive.
The Curious People newsletter shares our solutions for helping build resilient communities, industry, and businesses while promoting the energy transition and the regenerative use of natural resources.
Living with the imperfect data reality
On the ground, the reality of construction project delivery looks very different from the idealised data environments often assumed in policy design. Information is typically fragmented across spreadsheets, PDFs and disconnected software platforms. Data is frequently incomplete, inconsistent or difficult to access when needed. Even relatively straightforward lifecycle assessments can require significant manual effort and often need to be repeated as projects evolve.
At the same time, reporting is becoming increasingly demanding, requiring organisations to track and predict environmental impacts across entire asset lifecycles in a transparent and auditable way. The result is a growing mismatch between what is being asked for and what is currently achievable in practice.
In this context, simply calling for better data risks missing the point. More data does not automatically translate into better decision-making, and increasing reporting requirements can add administrative burden without improving outcomes. For smaller firms in particular, the effort required to gather and manage data may become a barrier to participation rather than a driver of improvement.
Without a clear sense of what ‘enough’ looks like, expanding reporting requirements risks adding burden without improving sustainability outcomes.
What matters instead is the idea of data sufficiency: having enough of the right data, in a usable form, at the right time. The challenge is also, by no means, purely technical. While digital tools and data infrastructures are essential, they sit within a broader system shaped by policy, commercial incentives and organisational practices.
Treating environmental reporting as a technical problem – something that can be solved with better data alone – misses the bigger picture. This broader picture includes the composition of today’s digital landscape itself. Construction data is often locked within proprietary software ecosystems that do not communicate easily with one another, making information difficult to transfer, integrate or reuse over long asset lifecycles. Practitioners experience this “imperfect data reality” – an often frustrating cycle of software migration, obsolescence and information loss.
These challenges are reinforced by wider market dynamics. Traditional procurement and contracting models often prioritise short-term cost and delivery over long-term lifecycle performance, while sustainability policy increasingly depends on long-term, high-quality information. Without changes to how projects are procured and managed, industry may struggle to support the lifecycle ambitions these policies rely upon.
There’s a need for a more balanced and pragmatic approach
The construction sector is not short on sustainability ambition. The challenge, however, lies in translating that ambition into everyday practice. Overly idealised assumptions about data availability and quality risk creating frameworks that appear robust on paper but prove difficult to implement in practice.
Policy must remain grounded in the imperfect data reality of the sector.
Here policymakers have a critical role to play – not only in setting ambitious targets, but in ensuring that the conditions for implementation are in place. This may include clearer guidance on data requirements, support for interoperability and standardisation, and investment in shared information infrastructures that reduce duplication and uncertainty.
Defining what constitutes a sufficient level of digitalisation is a crucial part of that transition. Without it, there is a risk that efforts to improve sustainability become absorbed by the mechanics and procedure of reporting itself, rather than driving meaningful change in how buildings and infrastructure are designed, delivered and managed.
Better data will play an important role in the sustainability transition. But on its own, it will not be enough.
