In 2025, Precision Precast Reinforcement was awarded Sustainable Constructional Steel Certification by ACRS. Here is what Director of Operations Julian Borgert had to say about SCS Certification.

The processor/trader

PPR is a specialist supplier. We exist purely to manufacture high tolerance, high quality reinforcement for the precast industry, which has a far tighter set of performance criteria than mainstream construction and needs a unique approach to reinforcement processing. We provide steel mainly to civil engineering projects - bridge girders and parapets, railway structures and stations.

The process

Since PPR’s inception, we’ve used the ACRS Product Certification model as a fundamental business management tool. We didn’t bolt on processes for certification at a later date, we saw them as a must-have from day one.

We now see SCS Certification as a must-have for the sustainable supply of steel into the future. It's not too different to the existing business management processes for certification – it’s just one more we embrace.

For example, we already have full traceability through our supply chain thanks to ACRS Product Certification, which is crucial to drawing a full picture of sustainability. So much of the necessary processes for SCS Certification are already in place.

The benefits

The main benefit of the SCS scheme is a uniform and benchmarked approach to reducing your impact and demonstrating to your customers your commitment to sustainable principles.

Steel mills, and then processors and traders, understand that benchmarking against sustainability criteria gets sales. 

The building sector is ahead of our specialty area of government-funded infrastructure when it comes to sustainable structures and sustainable structures and rating systems like Green Starrating systems like Green Star, driven by private equity funding principles. But we’re reading the tea leaves – infrastructure is having to catch up fast.

If a customer asks what the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of the steel in their project sourced from PPR is, we can already provide exact figures – thanks to the end-to-end traceability we already have in place for ACRS Product Certification. This is something asked for in the industry today: Laing O’Rourke have said publicly that when product is delivered to their side gate, they want it to arrive with the GWP. Lots of tenders seek this information.

But one of the driving factors for PPR to get SCS Certification was that we wanted to be able to provide that data in an independently-certified manner – and via one uniform approach, rather than different criteria, processes and documentation for every customer. Steel is a global supply chain and rules and processes differ between regions, so SCS Certification protects businesses through the value chain from a scattergun approach. Otherwise, gathering information on a project at the end of the supply chain or meeting benchmarks becomes a monumental task. 

The other benefit is that it allows for continuous improvement, which can only be achieved with clarity and transparency over product.

The future of sustainability

SCS was a sorely needed system – before it there were lots of competing schemes, but none fit for purpose. The sentiment in the construction industry is that the multiplicity of schemes will need to consolidate to industry-wide uniformity, and ACRS SCS Scheme is the answer to that. Once it is adopted broadly, it will be far easier for everyone in the value chain to assess, compare and improve their steel impact.

In the sustainability space, having an internationally-benchmarked and independently-certified scheme for assessment of providers allows companies like PPR to seamlessly pass sustainability data forward in the value chain. One day soon, sustainability accreditation will be a given. In the meantime, it protects from greenwashing and gives customers assurance around their carbon footprint, traceability and sustainability goals.

What really needs to happen is for sustainability to be integrated into design codes. It is design decisions that make the biggest impact on a project’s sustainability – to make sustainability integral to planning from the get-go.