In recent years, there has been a growing interest in addressing human-induced impacts on the environment, with a particular focus on transitioning to sustainability and achieving carbon neutrality. However, the current implementation of Whole Life Carbon (WLC) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in the construction sector in the Czech Republic is hindered by several challenges. These include gaps in stakeholders’ knowledge, limited availability of LCA data on construction products and buildings, insufficient market incentives, and low institutional capacity. This study, conducted as part of the INDICATE project, aims to streamline the process of WLC calculation and establish a consistent national assessment method specific to the Czech context. The project encompasses various phases, i.e., a case study collection of office, multi-family, single-family, education, and logistic hall buildings, followed by the development of a comprehensive unified materials database, classification of building parts and uniform work with the bill of quantities, stakeholder engagement, an LCA of case studies with a sensitivity analysis, and WLC policy suggestions, including the quality of the project data, simplifications, and a benchmarks definition. The Global Warming Potential (GWP) is calculated throughout the entire life cycle of each considered building, utilizing the EU Level(s) methodology incorporated in the OneClick LCA software. By adhering to these newly developed methodological steps, benchmarks for multi-residential buildings are shown. The same methodology could be replicated by stakeholders in other countries to enhance their evaluation processes and ensure consistent results across their projects.

The construction industry is undergoing a significant transformation driven by digitalization and an unwavering commitment to implementing circular economy (CE) principles and sustainability into its core practices. Emerging digital technologies (DTs), such as Material Passports (MPs), Building Information Modelling (BIM) Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Scanning technologies, Blockchain technology (BCT), the Internet of Things (IoT) stand out as pivotal tools capable of expediting the transition towards CE implementation in buildings. This study highlights the significant potential of six DTs to support CE application throughout the building lifecycle. Furthermore, it delves into the potential synergies among these diverse DTs, highlighting the additional benefits that collaboration can bring across different lifecycle stages of a building project. Particular emphasis is placed on the integration of MPs with other DTs, showing promise in assessing resource availability, volumes, and flows. This integration optimizes waste reduction and recycling plans, contributing to more precise selective and smart deconstruction planning. The combined use of DTs offers substantial benefits to stakeholders, enabling them to make informed decisions regarding maintenance and understand the current quality of specific materials. Through these means, the study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the array of DTs propelling circular building practices. It also explores emerging trends in this dynamic field, scrutinizing the effectiveness of adopting these technologies throughout the building life cycle stages, and anticipating potential challenges these technologies may face.

The transition towards a Circular Economy (CE) stands as a pivotal strategy in reshaping our prevailing consumption patterns towards more sustainable resource management. Within this context, the European Union places a strong emphasis on elevating recycling and renovation rates while reducing dependence on primary resources, with a particular focus on the construction industry. Material and Building Passports have emerged as potential tools to facilitate this transition. They play a multifaceted role in CE, serving to raise awareness of the building’s performance, functioning as digital repositories of extensive data, and acting as consulting instruments for stakeholders involved in renovation actions, energy management, and building operation. However, a universally accepted definition of these tools remains elusive, and diverse interpretations persist. To contribute to a deeper understanding of these tools, this study embarks on a comprehensive review, tracing their evolutionary journey and delving into the potentialities and synergies they offer in fostering circularity throughout the life cycle of buildings. It also examines the barriers hindering their full-scale development and adoption, including the lack of standardization and legislative measures, financial constraints, issues of stakeholder involvement and responsibility, as well as challenges associated with data accessibility.

Humanity in our days is fighting with climate change effects and the depletion of natural resources. In this direction, the adoption of sustainable and circular practices is considered vital and in most cases is prescribed by regulations. The construction sector is responsible for massive amounts of energy consumed during the extraction of raw materials, the production of building materials, the construction phase, the operating phase of the buildings, and also during their demolition and end-of-life. The latter one already gathers the scientific community’s interest with the efforts being focused on efficient Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) management solutions. Meanwhile, Building Information Modelling (BIM), as a storage medium of information about all building components, offers various advantages on a building’s optimum design and operation, allowing information exchange among all involved stakeholders. Although many studies demonstrate the effectiveness of BIMs in reducing construction waste for new buildings, there is not extensive research on how BIMs can contribute to CDW reduction for an existing building. In this review study, the existing studies addressing BIM integration on CDW management are analyzed, pointing out the advantages that this strategy offers on reducing CDW and managing them efficiently, increasing reuse and recycle rates, and promoting circularity. The main challenges this approach presents, mainly attributed to the difficulty of gathering the required information with the appropriate accuracy about an existing building, are extensively discussed, along with future research needs, necessary for a further enhancement of this technique.

The widespread adoption of circularity principles in the building sector fuels the need for robust and comprehensive evaluation systems, which could benefit from the approaches and indicators employed in widely accepted building sustainability assessment (BSA) methods. Simultaneously, the effective consideration of circular economy (CE) principles into BSA methods becomes increasingly urgent. An important step towards achieving these targets is the investigation of whether, and to which degree, the existing BSA methods encompass and express circularity principles; this study focuses on this relatively underexplored theme. Specifically, this study investigates the degree of association between five widely used BSA methods and the circularity strategies included in the 10R Framework. The methods examined are BREEAM, DGNB, LEED, Level(s) and SBTool (versions and criteria for new buildings). The examination was conducted at the lowest self-contained and score-attributing level of each method and was undertaken by five expert groups—each assigned one method. A quantitative scale from 0 to 5 was used to assess the strength of the association. The results are analysed in terms of (i) the criteria/thematic areas within each method receiving high/low scores, and (ii) the circularity strategies deduced to be strongly/weakly represented in and across the BSA methods. Common trends and milder differences across these axes are observed. Generally, the associations appear stronger in thematic areas relevant to, among others, resources and lifecycle performance, and weaker regarding parameters linked to user comfort. The R-strategies Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rethink emerge as more intensely represented in the examined methods. The study’s results indicate areas for further research and potential methodological enhancement.