BIM-based processes and digital twins for facilitating and optimising circular energy renovation (Built4People Partnership)

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Reduced buildings construction and renovation time and costs.
• Increased buildings material reuse and recycling.
• Improvement of buildings performance (energy, sustainability including whole life-cycle carbon and the potential to store carbon in built works, comfort, health and well-being, and accessibility).
• Enhanced, interoperable and accessible buildings information across the lifecycle.
• Improvement of interoperability with existing Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Digital Twin solutions.
• Broader application of BIM and Digital Twin solutions, in particular within SMEs.

To improve Building Information Modelling and Digital Twinning over the full life cycle of buildings, including construction and renovation of buildings, towards enhanced energy efficiency and sustainability and in compliance with circular economy and resource efficiency principles.

Proposals are expected to address all of the following:

• Develop and integrate solutions based on BIM and Digital Twins to support the whole buildings life cycle from design to deconstruction and reuse, including operation.
• Ensure the solutions developed address all the following aspects:
  • Supporting optimal, adaptable and reversible building design for energy efficiency, circularity and sustainability.
  • Allowing to track buildings materials and construction products, and supporting cost-effective deconstruction and reuse, recycling and recovery of building materials at end of life.
  • Integrating buildings monitoring data (e.g. from sensors and IoT devices) into an interoperable Digital Twin for automated, optimised building performance monitoring and management, and preventive maintenance.
  • Enabling buildings data interoperability, quality and integrity across the life cycle, in particular to reliably assess and track building performance over the lifecycle, enabling tailored data access for all life cycle’s stakeholders (architects, engineering companies, contractors, building owners, financing institutions, etc.).
  • Relying where possible on open BIM standards and linking, where relevant, to digital logbooks and relevant initiatives (e.g. the Smart Readiness Indicator under the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive).
  • Easiness of use and cost effectiveness, in particular for SMEs and companies with limited experience in digital solutions, and high potential for replication and commercialisation.
• Apply the solutions delivered on a set (at least two) of real-life residential and non-residential building construction and renovation projects which, taken together, allow to demonstrate the potential of the solutions across all aspects listed in the topic and across the life cycle.
• Ensure that the demonstrations of the solutions delivered:
  • Cover at least two different countries, with diverse climatic conditions.
  • Involve local and regional values chains, in particular SMEs, based on participatory approaches to increase innovation acceptability.
  • Result in clear and, where relevant, quantified and measurable indicators on the improvements due to the use of the solutions, for all aspects listed in the topic and across the life cycle.
• Contribute to the activities of the Built4People partners and to the Built4People network of innovation clusters.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership on ‘People-centric sustainable built environment’ (Built4People). As such, projects resulting from this topic will be expected to report on results to the European Partnership ‘People-centric sustainable built environment’ (Built4People) in support of the monitoring of its KPIs.

Activities are expected to achieve TRL 6-8 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.