Circular Construction: Material passport

Circular building stems from the idea that underpin the circular economy, which is about making smart use of raw materials, products and goods so they can be reused. Hence the name circular. A closed loop. This is necessary, because we are more aware of the fact that we will run out of raw materials and that our planet will need time to replenish.

We see more and more material passports being made for buildings. The purpose of a material passport is to identify all the materials used in a building in order to ensure that reuse is easy in the future.

The potential benefits of circularly designed buildings are well known: less waste and resource depletion on one hand and an emphasis on quality of design, sustainability and environmentally friendly use of materials on the other. And, of course, this also creates an interesting supplier-customer relationship. Especially when looking at the costs of a construction project, it is necessary to know at a detailed level which 'elements' are present. Currently, many projects get away with an estimate of the use of materials and demolition. But now that themes such as Building Information Modelling (BIM), Sustainability and Digitisation are becoming more important, more and more companies are realising that it is time to build in a circular fashion. Devouring energy and raw materials in the construction process and demolition is a thing of the past. Keeping track of the use of materials and keeping track of all changes during the life of a building becomes very easy with BIMkeeper.

Below an example of a building in our BIMkeeper IFC viewer. Like all other BIM related information such as structure, all materials used are clearly shown. Including all counts. Such "collections can also be recorded. And if the window frames, for example, are replaced by another material, it’s immediately implemented within BIMkeeper. So we always see the current status of the building. By clicking on "types" or "Classification" (this is for example the NLSFBB coding) you can choose to display the different details of elements. On the right side you can immediately see which selection has been made and it can also be recorded and shared with other chain partners.

 

IRP bases all of its web development on the ISO 19650 standard for the development and full lifecycle of buildings. Formerly known as the BSI 1192-X. This standard has now been almost fully implemented in BIMkeeper.