Tracking steel material provenance and compliance securely
Sector: Secondary sector · Industry: Construction · Organisation: Tata Steel, SAP, IBM, Arup · Maturity level: Pilot
Tata Steel initiated a blockchain pilot project with SAP, IBM, and Arup to secure steel material records and provenance in the construction sector. Operating under the Construction Smart Contract Committee, the consortium focused on creating tamper-resistant supply chain records for structural materials. This collaborative approach aims to streamline verification processes and prevent the risks of counterfeit quality certifications on construction sites.
Documentation status
- Project status: Pilot — Conducted as a collaborative pilot project of industry partners within the Construction Smart Contract Committee.
- Evidence: Evidence medium
- Editorial review: pending
Description
Tata Steel developed a blockchain-supported proof system for steel construction materials together with partners such as SAP, IBM and Arup. In the construction industry, analogue quality certificates and inconsistent data flows for building materials pose a continuous risk of delays and liability cases. The decentralised platform enables all participants to access verified material data directly from the manufacturer’s plant.
Within the Construction Smart Contract Committee, Tata Steel, the engineering and planning firm Arup, and technology companies IBM and SAP joined forces to solve an acute industry problem. On complex construction sites, verifying material qualities and load-bearing certificates is traditionally laborious, as documents undergo multiple media breaks. The joint pilot solution converts material test certificates at production into tamper-proof digital data sets on a shared ledger. Smart contracts automatically compare the properties of the delivered steel with the contractual and building regulation requirements of the respective construction phase. This seamless integration of manufacturer, IT service providers and engineers creates a reliable digital product passport that guarantees full traceability from the melt to the installed beam.
Perspectives
B2B — organisations perspective
Companies along the construction value chain benefit from an immutable information base regarding material qualities. General contractors and project managers minimise the risk of contractual defect claims, while manufacturers like Tata Steel can protect the integrity of their branded products from inferior imitations.
Employees perspective
Quality inspectors and site managers can digitally retrieve and verify material certificates directly, eliminating time-consuming inquiries with suppliers. The professionals gain time for operational inspections on site but need training in handling digitally signed certificates.
Benefits
General
- Seamless and tamper-proof traceability of building materials from the factory
- Reduction of media breaks and manual documentation errors
- Acceleration of approval processes upon delivery to construction sites
B2B — organisations
- Reduction of liability and forgery risks for safety-relevant construction steel
- Automated target-actual comparison of material specifications via smart contract
Employees
- Relief from paper-based tracking of countless individual certificates
- Greater certainty in building regulation document verification
Challenges
General
- High integration effort across different company and ERP boundaries
- Lack of comprehensive data standards for material certificates across the entire construction industry
B2B — organisations
- Willingness of competing suppliers and subcontractors to use a shared platform infrastructure
Employees
- Required digital skills for verifying cryptographically secured material certificates
Technology foundation
The solution uses a distributed ledger network and smart contracts for the immutable storage and verification of mill certificates and supply chain data between steel manufacturers, software providers, and engineering service providers.
Implementation examples
Construction Smart Contract Committee Steel Provenance Pilot
The manual and fragmented documentation of material grades regularly led to inefficiencies, delays, and uncertainties regarding liability issues in the construction industry.
Tata Steel, together with SAP, IBM, and Arup, initiated a pilot trial for tamper-proof recording and verification of steel certificates in construction projects.
Within the Construction Smart Contract Committee, Tata Steel, Arup, IBM, and SAP worked together on digitising material testing for the construction sector. The project demonstrated how steel provenance certificates and quality data can be stored decentrally and reconciled with smart contracts. The aim was to prove that a transparent data basis sustainably increases productivity and trust in large-scale, material-intensive construction projects.
Prevention of manipulative interference with quality certificates and elimination of bureaucratic hurdles in the approval process for site deliveries.
Tags
Material Proof, Supply Chain, Quality Assurance, Smart Contracts, Construction Documentation