Although the construction industry has the potential to implement circular economy (CE) principles, the sector suffers from a veritable lack of initiatives to develop circular and regenerative design principles. However, existing buildings intended to be demolished could be considered as material banks for future constructions, with the aim to exploit anthropogenic resources, extend material/product efficiency, and reduce the extraction of natural resources. This concept of buildings as material banks is being studied more and more in the scientific literature, but it still requires the existing building stock to be fully digitalized, thus making materials reusable in new buildings starting from the architectural design stage. Moreover, the decision process regarding CE strategies requires the consideration of the environmental impacts of the deconstruction and end-of-life processes, which is essential in CE implementation. This paper introduces a digital platform for generating materials inventory and supporting the definition of reuse strategies. Then, by using digital tools in combination with life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of the deconstruction process and output of materials and components inventories, a method is defined and tested on a pilot building in Luxembourg.

The construction industry is responsible for more than one-third of all waste produced in the European Union. The Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) includes numerous material types in large volumes like concrete, bricks, wood, metals, gypsum, plastics, etc., and this also includes the treatment of hazardous materials such as asbestos in smaller quantities. The current practice of supply chain actors does not employ sufficient reuse of such materials, with the exception for metallic elements, which is detrimental to a circular economy (CE). In order to boost reuse principles in the construction sector, supply chain actors need more convenient ways to identify materials with high reuse potential and streamline the process from deconstruction to reuse. Thus, the development of adapted digital tools and platforms is a first step in addressing two major challenges for the construction sector: digitalisation and CE. Making a materials inventory of a building and assessing the reuse potential of each building component are key elements. Usually, these processes are paper-based and manual, but digitalisation is expected to bring significant improvements. This chapter elaborates on the different emerging technologies which enable circularity around the building and construction sector. We then present a collaborative process supporting the definition of reuse strategy and its implementation in the Digital Deconstruction integrated platform, following by a pilot case in Luxembourg where the application has been deployed. <!----> <!----> <!----> <!---->

The rapid development and use of BIM in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Facility Management (AEC/FM) industry requires an adequate understanding of the roles and competencies that professionals should develop and maintain. Besides, as the specific processes associated with BIM remain closely linked to the nature of the activities and teams involved in each project, one can consider that the definition of roles and competencies requires a project-level discussion and alignment. This article presents the main results achieved through the BIM4VET research project. It focuses first on the matrix of responsibilities defined for BIM profiles, and presents the global approach for assessing competency maturity and further recommends training courses, thanks to a benchmark carried out by the project partners. Second, the paper describes the BIM4VET toolset developed, and its associated repository of training modules, the management of users and their maturity assessment, and further the collective decision-making system intending to help practitioners collaboratively elaborating project-level responsibilities and registering for training sessions. The assessment of results is presented, through both (1) a Delphi questionnaire for achieving a sector-wide validation of roles and responsibilities, and (2) an experimental protocol involving observation of professionals using the tools.