General views about the green, digital and resilient construction ecosystem

Our built environment is one of the main assets of the European economy. It evolves continuously around us, and we may now have the opportunity to transform it to meet the needs of society, to respond to known environmental challenges, and to lead our economy towards sustainability, decarbonisation, growth, and inclusiveness.

Whilst our decision-makers should steer this transition, the construction industry and its value-chain have a decisive role to play. Indeed, based on the future Transition Roadmap for construction that will be drafted in the coming months, we can deliver on the key priorities set by the European Union and so help achieve the target that lies at the heart of the EU 2050 strategy, reaching climate neutrality by 2050.

In its New Industrial Strategy, the European Commission has identified construction as one of the key sectors, now referred to as ecosystem, to “build a stronger Single Market for Europe’s recovery”. The Commission is now keen to discuss future actions with our sector and to collate recommendations to form our Transition Roadmap. Our guiding principles are to be found in the European Green Deal and such documents as the Renovation Wave and the new Circular Economy Action Plan.

There are numerous challenges to delivering a sustainable built environment. As far as regulation is concerned, construction products belong to the European Union area of competence, whilst national, regional and local authorities regulate buildings and construction works. Therefore, cohesion between these authorities is essential if we are to address and improve building performance. More so, the diverse nature of our local environmental and climatic conditions and availability of local resources means that we cannot deliver a single solution that fits all, we need to develop a variety of technical solutions that best responds to our local built environment. Lastly, clear targets and measurable indicators must be agreed upon as we debate and agree on such concepts sustainability, circular economy, climate neutrality, affordability, and decarbonisation.

Achieving EU Green Deal goals through sustainable built environment

Theoretically, sustainability may be defined for entire systems, their constituting parts alone cannot be sustainable as it is their interrelations that allows for an effective overall sustainable outcome. It must be clear that the same rule applies for construction, whatever the nature of the build, from homes, to hospitals, from bridges to dams. Indeed, local conditions, engineering, design, installation, operation, end-of-life phases, and many more characteristics all have specific impacts. Therefore, the built environment must be envisaged as a whole, with information collated from all phases and actors of the value-chain, work carried out in coordination, aiming at the same goals. This is where digital technologies may come in as supportive tools, ensuring efficient transfer of data and knowledge, improving performance. As all construction information should be available for built assets, an example of a digital solution would be building logbooks that would compile open data and improve long-term management.

It is essential that regulatory provisions and incentives are based on a scientifically accepted assessment methodology. In our industry, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) are trusted tools; instruments that have delivered product information throughout the value-chain for many years. The Construction Products Regulation (CPR) has proven to be the most adequate regulatory tool to provide product performance while guaranteeing a healthy internal market.

The construction industry is subject to a large number of regulations, directives, standards, and other initiatives. Regulatory and voluntary implementation must be compatible, and competence shared between Member States must be applied coherently, thereby preventing gaps and overlaps. A coherent and overarching European strategy may assist in the delivery of a sustainable built environment and, ultimately, help to achieve the aims of the Green Deal.

In summary, we believe that the key principles to establishing a sustainable built environment are:

  • Defining clear targets that are validated at all levels of decision-making,
  • Carrying out sustainability performance assessments at building level,
  • Using Level(s) , the EU sustainable buildings framework, as the reference methodology,
  • Improving the secondary materials market to enhance circularity in construction,
  • Using digital technologies as support tool.

For the sake of clarity, this document is divided in chapters, each of them includes one initiative, but they cannot be considered as isolated elements because all are interconnected, as described in the text. Order is also not relevant:

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