For Cordeel, the priority is obvious:

"The most important insight is that the biggest part of our carbon footprint comes from the materials we purchase to build. For us Scope 3 amounts to 97.4% of our total footprint."
— Simon Maillet

Getting a grip on that number is genuinely hard. Cordeel runs 30 to 50 sites a year, geographically spread and constantly changing phase, often built in joint ventures where data sits with a partner.  

Like most companies, Cordeel started with a spend-based estimate: supplier spend from the accounting systems, multiplied by generic emission factors. This provided a good first indication, but the industry average-based approach breaks the moment it has to start driving decisions.

"If a concrete supplier delivers a low-carbon mix but you apply the same generic factor as for standard concrete, the effort disappears. And if emissions are linked to spend, the only way to reduce them is to spend less. For me that doesn't make sense, so I refused to define a reduction target until now."
— Simon Maillet

The underlying data didn't help either.

"We don't have one ERP system but many, and none of them lets me get a proper extract of, for example, how many cubic metres of concrete we purchased, or how many square metres of aluminium façade we placed on a project. If we want to go further than spend-based, we need to involve our suppliers."
— Simon Maillet

So Simon tried to involve them himself. It didn't scale.

"In the previous year I thought I'd do it myself. I sent emails to around 25 companies asking for an idea of their footprint for the materials they produce for us. The feedback was really low, and with a small team, it's really hard to reach out to 100 suppliers effectively."
— Simon Maillet

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First, Simon narrowed the problem. A high-level spend analysis pointed to five material categories: concrete, steel, façades, roofs and timber. Chosen not just for how large their emission impact was, but also for data readiness. These are primary materials where suppliers can share quantities and, increasingly, product LCAs. Categories like HVAC were parked; a big share of cost, but far harder to source emissions data from a heat pump than from a cubic metre of concrete. That left a shortlist of around 100 key suppliers, which accounts to roughly 30% of spend, and an even larger share of emissions.

Then Cordeel partnered with ClimateCamp to improve the data. Not with another round of  surveys, but with active engagement and expert-led primary data collection.

"This is why we chose ClimateCamp. We defined the 100 top suppliers together, and they were all contacted by ClimateCamp. Your colleague Fien set up calls with them and follows up, we didn't just send out a survey and hope for the best. She contacted the partners we'd defined together, had the meetings, and asked the questions we needed for our carbon footprint. I was able to join a couple of the calls, and it was super interesting."
— Simon Maillet

For materials where primary data isn't yet reachable, ClimateCamp made the remaining spend-based calculations far more granular by mapping activity to more specific emission factors. And the data doesn't sit in a silo, it flows straight into Cordeel's reporting workflow.

"Via ClimateCamp we can import all the information on a company basis into Palau. We have the footprint of all these companies, so we can pick the ones we want to report on and put that into a given framework. This makes it far more efficient than drafting everything by hand."
— Simon Maillet

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The calls surfaced real, usable primary data and showed how large the disparities in data availability and quality within the market still are.

"Some suppliers told me, 'We never get these questions in Belgium.' Others said they didn't even know what they needed to deliver. And then we had really mature concrete suppliers who could give us, per construction site, all the concrete mixes they sold us,  including an LCA product carbon footprint for every mix."
— Simon Maillet

For a two-person team, the shift from doing outreach by hand to having ClimateCamp run 100 structured conversations is the difference between a lack in follow-up and a dataset which can be put to work. For Simon it frees up the time for the most important work only he can do: LCA modelling, low-carbon design choices, educating internal stakeholders, and steering sustainability strategy.

The data granularity also feeds a single, well-documented dataset Cordeel can direct into the CO₂ Performance Ladder, CSRD and other frameworks. Something which is key in moving up to step two of the ladder. Crucially, it's what finally makes a Scope 3 target possible: with credible, primary data on the categories that matter, Cordeel plans to define a proper target by year-end, one built on realistic reductions and pathways.

There's a strong track record to build on: by starting early on Scope 1 and 2, the group cut those emissions by 50.4% in absolute terms, from roughly 11,000–12,000 tonnes down to 5,500. With ClimateCamp, it now has the supplier data to write the same story for Scope 3.

"The team at ClimateCamp was a great help in getting into the granularity. Even though spend-based stays generic, we're much more granular than we were in the past. As a sector, we have to keep asking our suppliers for this information, because that's what gives them the business case to invest in it."
— Simon Maillet

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