The partners of the European project REZBUILD have gathered recently at the facilities of PLACO Saint-Gobain in Madrid sharing the progresses made during the first 12 months

 

The consortium partners of REZBUILD met recently at the facilities of Saint-Gobain Placo Ibérica, one of the partners of the European project, on the first anniversary of the launch of the initiative. The day supposed a stage to share the progresses made during the first twelve months of the project and the discussions on the challenges that must be faced.

The European REZBUILD project is based on strategies such as the fight against climate change, the energy transition, the creation of quality and qualified employment in the construction and refurbishment sectors. Social aspects and challenges such as the energy poverty or the gentrification will be considered in this initiative funded by the Horizon2020 Programme of the European Commission.

The main objective is to define an innovative and collaborative renovation ecosystem to achieve Near Zero Energy Building (NZEB) in Europe.

With the aim at achieving these goals, REZBUILD  will develop rehabilitation processes, through a tool that optimizes the execution time of the works using  BIM technologies, reducing the costs, and maximizing energy savings with different types of innovative solutions and developments.

The developments and technologies of the REZBUILD project will be tested in 3 multi-scale demo sites covering 3 out of 4 of the most usual residential building typologies in Europe and representing the most prevalent European climates (North-Continental, Central-Atlantic and South-Mediterranean). Residential buildings located in Madrid (Spain), Oslo (Norway) and Martellago (Italy) have been choosing by the project´s partners wit this aim.

The event in Madrid brought together the 13 partners of the consortium led by Officinae Verdi Group (Italy) and in which Vias y Construcciones, CARTIF, Comunidad de Madrid, Saint-Gobain Placo Ibérica, ONYX Solar, Exploded View and ZABALA Innovation Consulting also participate (all from Spain), in addition to ESTIA (France), SINTEF (Norway), OBOS (Norway), University of Notthingham (United Kingdom) and Rimond (Italy).

The first day of the meeting the technical session was dedicated to the evolution of the different work packages (from WP1 to WP8) that includes the project. Discussions conducted made a special emphasis on the progresses during this first year and the challenges that have to be addressed.

The second day of the meeting served to face another technical session in which the evolution of work packages 9 and 10 was showcased. Once the part of the technical part of the project was updated, the partners visit the different prototypes and the facilities of Saint-Gobain Placo Ibérica. After the break, a discussion table was held in and the meeting ended with the wrap up of the topics discussed and the conclusions.

Social acceptance and expected impacts

To achieve the European objectives, REZBUILD considers a number of challenges to renew and obtain NZEB buildings considering the technical, economic, social, environmental and legal dimensions. To do this, it will develop advanced technologies for the renovation of buildings in a platform of common knowledge for decision making. This platform will bring together all interested parties involved in the process of housing renovation, from designers, construction companies, researchers and industrialists, consumers, as well as public/private owners. The project includes measures of participation, information and commitment for all the value chain of the construction sector and citizens.

The initiative will promote innovation in the construction sector with the integration of technologies to achieve the objective of an annual renewal rate of 2.5%, above the current one, lower than the 1%.

In this sense, REZBUILD will base its renewal ecosystem on the integration of profitable technologies, business models and life cycle interaction in various types of residential renovation and interconnecting both the renovation stages of buildings and the agents involved in the whole process.

The expected impacts of REZBUILD are the following:

• Reduction of at least 60% of energy consumption to achieve the goal of renovating buildings and ensuring that they are almost nil in terms of energy consumption.
• Reduction of the execution time by at least 30% compared to a traditional restoration.
• A period of amortization of the investment of less than 12 years and exceeding the requirement of the call (15 years).
• Achieve a high potential for replication and high absorption capacity by the market.
• Promotion of new business and employment opportunities based on the technologies developed in the project.

In this way, the demonstration experience in Madrid, together with those planned in Norway and Italy, will serve to validate if these objectives are met and housing buildings are replicated.