Digital technologies are more and more needed to give access to Cultural Heritage (CH) and to allow for their curation and re-use. For this reason, it is necessary to increase the knowledge on the CH building stock to support sustainable maintenance, preservation and revitalization strategies through the development of user-friendly asset management tools to support the decision-making process towards an affordable and feasible conservation strategy. The Asset Management tool described in this paper is a software solution used for condition assessment on–site and management of assets with embedded Building Information Model (BIM) software. The main aim of the tool is to leverage the existing data in BIM to expedite and enhance the quality of building inspections. The solution provides the possibility to not only asses the condition in a professional way, but also to optimize the conservation maintenance planning according to different ambition levels and needs. A well elaborated and used standard for Condition Assessment is integrated and tailored on Cultural Heritage within the framework of H2020-INCEPTION project. In this context, the CH Asset Management (CH AM tool) is regarded mainly within the framework of decision-making for restoration, conservation and maintenance of historic buildings.

Dealing with and maintaining high-quality standards in the design and construction phases is challenging, especially for on-site construction. Issues like improper implementation of building components and poor communication can widen the gap between design specifications and actual conditions. To prevent this, particularly for energy-efficient buildings, it is vital to develop resilient, sustainable strategies. These should optimize resource use, minimize environmental impact, and enhance livability, contributing to carbon neutrality by 2050 and climate change mitigation. Traditional post-occupancy evaluations, which identify defects after construction, are impractical for addressing energy performance gaps. A new, real-time inspection approach is necessary throughout the construction process. This paper suggests an innovative guideline for prefabricated buildings, emphasizing digital ‘self-instruction’ and ‘self-inspection’. These procedures ensure activities impacting quality adhere to specific instructions, drawings, and 3D models, incorporating the relevant acceptance criteria to verify completion. This methodology, promoting alignment with planned energy-efficient features, is supported by BIM-based software and Augmented Reality (AR) tools, embodying Industry 4.0 principles. BIM (Building Information Modeling) and AR bridge the gap between virtual design and actual construction, improving stakeholder communication and enabling real-time monitoring and adjustments. This integration fosters accuracy and efficiency, which are key for energy-efficient and nearly zero-energy buildings, marking a shift towards a more precise, collaborative, and environmentally sensible construction industry.

Nowadays ICT and digital heritage play an essential role in accessing and understanding Europe’s cultural basis and history. Documentation, data processing and representation of Architectural Heritage through digital models are one of the main challenges for knowledge, conservation, management and inclusive use of European heritage assets. The project INCEPTION — Inclusive Cultural Heritage in Europe through 3D semantic modelling has developed in this direction. The overall INCEPTION methodology is explained starting from one of the nine Demonstration Cases developed under the project: the Italian Demonstration Case, the Istituto degli Innocenti in Florence, by Brunelleschi, is an outstanding example of the overall INCEPTION process in the digital documentation, interpretation and deployment. A common framework for integrating different expertise, an advanced methodology for integrated data capturing, semantic modelling in BIM environment and the development of a platform to collect, archive and share semantically enriched models and applications for models deployment are the main project steps.

The ongoing EU funded project “INCEPTION – Inclusive Cultural Heritage in Europe through 3D semantic modelling” proposes a workflow aimed at the achievements of efficient 3D digitization methods, post-processing tools for an enriched semantic modelling, web-based solutions and applications to ensure a wide access to experts and non-experts. Nevertheless, the generation of high quality 3D models can still be very time-consuming and expensive, and the outcome of digital reconstructions is frequently provided in formats that are not interoperable, and therefore cannot be easily accessed. This challenge is even more crucial for complex architectures and large heritage sites, which involve a large amount of data to be acquired, managed and enriched by metadata. In order to face these challenges and to start solving the issues of the large amount of captured data and time-consuming processes in the production of 3D digital models, an Optimized Data Acquisition Protocol (DAP) has been set up. The purpose is to guide the processes of digitization of Cultural Heritage, respecting needs, requirements and specificities of cultural assets, by dealing with issues such as time-consuming processes and limited budget available for 3D documentation, accuracy of 3D models, integration of metadata and semantics into the 3D model and links with multimedia information. The DAP can be followed during the planning and performing of a 3D laser scanner survey of Cultural Heritage, and it is referred to architectural, archaeological, urban and site scales.