Compliance data infrastructure

CBAM Shared Data Platform

A shared evidence workflow for carbon border compliance, built to reduce supplier friction and improve audit readiness.

Challenge

CBAM reporting creates a coordination problem across importers, suppliers, advisors, and auditors. Critical emissions evidence is often trapped in spreadsheets, email threads, and local supplier systems, which makes audit readiness difficult to prove.

Approach

Defined a shared operating layer for supplier submissions, evidence collection, emission factor governance, exception management, and validation states. The product model emphasizes traceability, progressive data quality, and clear ownership.

Impact

Created a platform path that helps organizations move from reactive compliance collection to a controlled evidence workflow, reducing ambiguity for suppliers and giving leadership a clearer view of exposure.

Primary outcomeAudit readiness

Evidence, emissions data, and validation status organized into one operating view.

Core systemSupplier workspace

A shared collection and review flow for importers, suppliers, and advisors.

Risk focusEvidence gaps

Missing, weak, or unverified inputs surfaced early enough to act.

System diagram

CBAM Shared Data Platform as an operating flow.

01Supplier Data
02Evidence Chain
03Exception Queue
04Audit View

Executive memo

The boardroom version: decision, operating model, impact.

Decision

How can importers move CBAM readiness from spreadsheet chase to governed evidence workflow?

Operating model

A shared data platform with supplier submissions, evidence objects, validation states, exception queues, and leadership exposure views.

Measurable impact

Improves audit readiness by surfacing missing, weak, or unverified evidence early enough for named owners to act.

Decision enabled

A readiness view that shows which suppliers, products, and reporting periods are clean, blocked, or at risk.

Risks reduced

Regulatory deadlines reached with unclear evidence quality.
Supplier follow-up buried in email and local spreadsheets.
Leadership unable to see readiness, exposure, and unresolved data gaps.

Business value

The commercial reason this work matters.

Reduces reporting ambiguity across importers, suppliers, advisors, and auditors.
Improves control over evidence quality before deadlines create operational pressure.
Turns compliance from a spreadsheet scramble into a governed data workflow.

Buyer problem

What the market needed to understand.

01

Procurement teams need supplier data without creating endless email follow-up.

02

Sustainability and compliance teams need confidence in the evidence chain.

03

Executives need an exposure view before gaps become regulatory or commercial risk.

System Thesis

The hardest part of CBAM readiness is not only calculation. It is trust in the evidence chain. A useful platform must help each participant know what is required, what is missing, and what is ready to stand behind.

Design Moves

Created a modular data model for facilities, products, embedded emissions, supporting documents, reporting periods, and validation status.

Framed workflows around supplier confidence: guided collection, exception queues, review states, and clear evidence requirements.

What It Changed

The platform concept gives compliance, procurement, and sustainability leaders a shared operational view of readiness instead of a disconnected reporting scramble at deadline time.

My role

The direct contribution.

Framed the compliance problem as a multi-stakeholder operating model, not just a calculation engine.
Designed the data objects and review states required for audit-ready collaboration.
Translated regulatory pressure into product workflows that reduce supplier and internal friction.

Artifacts produced

The work products that made the strategy usable.

Supplier workspace concept
CBAM evidence data model
Exception queue workflow
Validation state map
Leadership exposure dashboard concept

Operating model

How the system moves from signal to action.

01

Guide suppliers through required facility, product, emissions, and document inputs.

02

Route incomplete or weak evidence into exception queues with named ownership.

03

Track validation status by reporting period and product family.

04

Give leadership a live view of readiness, risk, and unresolved supplier gaps.

Next step

Design a compliance data workflow