Digitizing a Circular Future: Design for Rehabilitation and Reuse

BRIDGET WHITE: Hi, and welcome to our session, digitizing a circular future. This discussion of design for rehabilitation and reuse. I'm going to leave the safe harbor statement there for you to take a little read later on, and we'll get started. I'm Bridget White here representing Nordic Office of Architecture in Oslo. I've been at Nordic for 13 years as a senior architect, and the leader of a team of 13 digital strategists. We work to align digital strategy with design strategy and optimize workflows with new ideas and perspectives. I have a special interest in digitalization as a driver for a sustainable future in the industry.

BREDE STOKLAND: Hello, my name is Brede Stokland. I'm an architect and a CEO of twin solutions. We're building a software for architects to enable them to build more circular in their designs.

BRIDGET WHITE: So today we're going to take you through a snapshot of where we are in Norway in terms of rehabilitation and reuse, and how we're using digital tools to answer some of the challenges and inefficiencies we are facing within our current projects, and introduce new technology created by Brede and his team to facilitate design with reuse in Revit. Right, so what's the status? And what are the factors that have ignited innovation within the AEC industry today?

These facts are for the most part ones that we know. In the AEC industry we're responsible within our three sectors-- three construction sectors-- for 40% of global emissions. 13% of these directly related to actual construction. In Norway we demolished 22,000 buildings per year, and only 1.4% of all projects are rehabilitation projects. Even when research shows that rehabilitation is one of the fastest ways to reduce CO2 emissions in the building industry.

In Norway we're currently down cycling 40% of building materials, but only reusing 4%, leaving a waste margin of 56%. And all in all the AEC industry is contributing to 20% of the total waste in Norway. These facts alone haven't been enough to counter change, but in combination with key legislation and now incentives for the development of more efficient and digitalized systems to support rehabilitation and reuse, we're witnessing a flurry of activity and mass interest in change.

For architects one key regulation has caused the start of a shift towards reuse being a factor, a major factor in rehabilitation projects. And that was in July 2023, when the first governmental criteria came into play. Elements must be remapped for reuse and demolition and rehabilitation projects.

So then what is the problem? Why are we so reluctant to rehabilitate? Besides the perceptions a new build gives a client, we ourselves as architects are also struggling with rehabilitation taboos. We interviewed our project teams and gathered knowledge both from our own experiences and from things that had gone wrong in the past.

So what are the biggest frustrations with rehabilitation? And from here we gathered the top three reasons architects love to hate rehabilitation. One of the most rewarding things an architect can achieve is to bring an old project back to life, whilst maintaining and enhancing the integrity of its original character. But the reality is that rehabilitation projects bring a lot greater risk due to the fact that we don't completely know what we've got in at first inspection.

Rehabilitation projects bring with them a wider resource team, sometimes involving specialists with a variety of levels of digitalization, and an existing building site, the potential for a really rich collaboration. However these projects are observed as those with the greatest time used for communication and documentation. And the third main frustration was to do with the clear setting of environmental goals, and the reality being often due to a lack of information, time, expertise, or willingness to stretch a budget for a better performing lower impact project, not reaching those goals.

So we zoomed out a bit and took a look at our existing workflows, and how with a new digital strategy we could tackle these issues with some core fundamental values. The field of technology out there is vast, as we all know it. So we needed some really clear goals.

Solutions would need to fall inside this specific criteria. Minimize risk, improve collaboration, and meet environmental goals, as well as being cloud based or a one source concept, be based around the native design environment, fitting information to and from the environment where we work daily as architects. There it'd be easy for all users to make that change into the new workflows.

We wanted to improve interoperability from field to office based on the idea that in rehabilitation we already have a building site to work with. We wanted to focus on reuse as a means to reduce CO2, and we wanted to be able to measure results at the end of our research. Or at the end of our new workflows for rehabilitation.

One thing to mention here, firstly, is that there are actually two project typologies within rehabilitation and demolition that we have observed, and I want to go through those two typologies so that we're clear about the one that we're going to talk mostly about today. The first being a full demo and new build. This typology has the potential of material donation and incorporation of donated materials in the new build, but the biggest differing factor here is that we most likely don't have a model.

In this circumstance, the building is meant for potential reuse and demoed. Potential digitalization of re-use elements would happen at a third party level, a [INAUDIBLE] which facilitates a later interaction with future projects in a model environment. We hope to have less and less of this typology in the future.

The other type of project which we're going to talk a bit more in depth about today is the partial demo and rehabilitation with a potential donation and incorporation of reuse elements. Here it's fundamental that we, as architects, are building the existing condition in a certain way for the benefit of the rest of the project life cycle, and reducing risk improving collaboration and meeting our environmental goals.

So how can we use new digital workflows to reduce risk? Research shows that the biggest risk in rehabilitation is associated with the unknowns of the existing condition, and the best way to eliminate that is through the digitalization of the existing through reality capture method, which is also proven to increase the potential to facilitate reuse.

We at Nordic are strategically aligning ourselves with experts that are going to bring us into the new era of rehabilitation and reuse. We're lucky enough to have access to a Scan to BIM department within our parent company Norconsult who are experts within the field of realitycapture and existing model builds, and we at Nordic have also onboarded a reality capture specialist in house. So my top tip of the day is to consult the experts. And I have [? Artemiz ?] and her team at Scan to BIM and Margarita here at Nordic to thank for sharing the following tips and workflows with you all.

Early implementation is essential. It's often a tough sale, but we're seeing the industry slowly understanding the benefits here. What we are used to are inaccurate DWGS, PDFs, old PDFs, but we're seeing more and more that architectural firms are refusing to work without the provision of point cloud representation. Your scan type must fit the purpose. Typically architects are not involved enough in the ordering of point clouds, but your delivery platform, usage, and level of detail to suit the project needs must be defined. This conversation can be the difference between an unused point cloud, and a file that allows a fully accurate representation of the existing condition.

Scan data should be centralized with full access to those that require reference to the existing site. Define a local zero point. You can order a point clouds in different systems having the point cloud aligning-- having the point cloud aligned to your local coordinate system is of great benefit to effective coordination. Don't forget that photogrammetry can also be an option here for isolated location scanning.

Get the color. Now the prices between color and desaturated scans are so minimal, and the color provides so much more depth to the data. So in our proposal in the process of digitalizing the existing conditions, we now should have three parties contributing to the initial product. Reuse mapping, a reuse mapping team, walk around to identify a potential reuse elements alongside the scanner and the architect who is potentially looking at design catalysts, or elements to incorporate back into the new project, and also advising the scanner of any areas of interest or disinterest. Starting the journey of the digital road from existing conditions to new build.

And then what? You've got your scan. Well, one of the most important factors we are looking at here is the scan visualization capabilities of a software, and here we can often use recap to look at and analyze the scans. And the other type of software which excels in the same type of visualization capabilities is center. But where it gets interesting for us as architects is the aggregation environment. And this is where center really gets interesting.

Let's just take a little status of the aggregation of reality capture in a model environment using the ACC, or the Autodesk Construction Cloud. Using a recap, I can export a mesh. This being actually the only way to aggregate at this point, but we've heard that they're working towards point cloud aggregation as well.

But as you can see, in many occasions this is not good enough. It's not accurate enough, actually, but it provides a visual overlay allowing a level of aggregation that may suit some project needs. You can see that I can get some things out of this. I can check some alignments that are maybe not so crucial, but there's a lot of noise, which can actually be cleared away, some of it. But you see that the mesh-- the averaging of the mesh creates a lot of noise.

In center, however, we can also allow a connection to the ACC by linking and updating models directly, and we can not only aggregate models here. Models, drawings, and the point cloud, but we can also compare. We can compare the files, the model files with the point cloud, and get a visual feedback on how accurate our existing [? kitchens ?] have been modeled. This is extremely crucial when you have structural elements for floor slabs, which you're basing your new design around. And you'll see here that the coloring system allows a really easy visual way to check and make sure that you're aligned, or completely off course in your existing model.

We can also create issues in center that can be directly transferred as issues in the ACC. This gives a seamless workflow between the two softwares, which is really great. Here you just click on integrations, and link to the Autodesk Construction Cloud. You'll see once you've linked, you get the new symbol, the construction [? sound ?] cloud is connected. And then you'll see the issue is actually linked appearing in the issues panel in the ACC.

OK, so we've got our verified existing conditions. How can we use digital tools to maintain the integrity of our existing model? Here we publish both the existing and the new version of our model, the existing condition and the new proposal, as separate views, to separate these two phases in the ACC. And then we can use the power of the cloud and the ACC compare tool to consistently compare between versions, from the first version, or the previous version, and we're able to see really clearly what's been changed, added, or removed. Automatically.

So with these workflows, capturing, visualizing, analyzing, and comparing, We're able to more efficiently document and understand our existing condition and greatly heighten our reuse potential, both in donation and integration into our project. Because we can be sure of what we already have and maintain that throughout the project life cycle.

So how can we improve collaboration in rehabilitation projects? In rehabilitation projects we're met with the opportunity to collaborate with potentially a wider team of experts, especially if the project has historical value or heritage regulation. However, in this situation due to differing digitalization routines, we have observed a high level of manual communication, email trails, folder structures, and several sources of truth leading to a lost opportunity for a better environmental performance, and a lot of wasted hours.

So in rethinking our current communication workflows we look to install a single source of truth, appropriate access and control, and the best possible interoperability between platforms and the collection of data. With our goals in mind of aligning to a cloud based platform, good connection to the native design environment, and the allowance of all affected parties to communicate different documentation types in the same platform, these are our top tips.

They document exactly how you're going to use the software. This is essential. There's so many different ways that you can orientate yourself around especially cloud software, like the ACC. Find a centralized team solution to your workflow. Have start up seminars to iron out exactly people's levels and understanding of the software, and make sure everybody's on board and knows who to ask. Have clear communication and collaboration goals, regularly refresh workflow knowledge, and research interoperability with existing systems. It may be that it's more efficient to connect to someone's existing workflows than to make them learn new ones.

In rehabilitation there is a bit of extra chaos or fluidity, we say, with information in, out, different actors, consequences, and in this particular exercise, we aim to follow the project's digital path along a single line. Our new concept was that here in rehabilitation, we already have a building site day one. So let's already start using field software and the collection and sharing of data, and information from site to office. In line with this idea, we started looking at the developments in the ACC, in particular Autodesk build.

So what are some of the features in build that we believe fill our collaboration needs that we are missing from our current digital workflows in rehabilitation and reuse? Well, we firstly all know about issues which are the identification and communication of areas of concern or improvement. But what's actually interesting to us in this case are two features that can be linked or created via issues, called RFIs and assets.

RFI has become particularly interesting in rehabilitation projects because they become a digital bridge between the site and the office. We can establish RFIs from site using the ACC App, or from the office in the cloud. You could describe it as passing the ball until you reach the goal. Our files allow the creation of a case or request for follow up, assigning of responsibility, followers, checkers, and it acts as a hub for documentation, pictures, model information, drawings, and comments.

In this particular project that we studied there were 13,000 unsorted pictures. RFIs create the possibility to structure case by case specific information flow from site to office and back. This is an example of the ACC App, which is really user friendly, and from the site I can create RFIs and documentation which are linked back to the RFI-- sorry-- RFI collection within the cloud.

Assets. So now we're on to assets, which are a new functionality actually for us. They're particularly interesting for rehabilitation and reuse, in that they allow for the connection of status to objects. In this case, when connected to reuse objects, a digital trail is created from existing to new. There are several ways to start the creation and connection of assets to model elements, depending on where your data or information is coming from. But for us what's important is the digital link and the creation of these as objects digitally, so we can actually understand more about them, and we have more chance that they'll be reused.

The first way you can create an asset is if you have your mapper creating data or someone that's gone around the building to understand what you have. And they've often submitted an Excel. You can actually restructure this using Autodesk's build template, and import the assets into your project on the ACC. From here you connect these digital assets to model elements when that becomes appropriate.

On Import you can identify the element for re-use, give it a status, and attach a barcode. And actually assign any custom fields to the object that are appropriate to record. The other way you can make an asset in the ACC is actually submit the model items as assets through a set of parameter connections. You can isolate model elements to create assets through filtering, and using particular parameters to filter, so that the project team can then begin to embellish them with more information. So that's the parameter link, through model.

So then what do you have? What exactly can this achieve? Essentially this is a new and digitalized way to work with rehabilitation and reuse, in particular. We can understand the status and condition of reuse elements digitally, and attach as much information to them as we like.

We can also operate in the same way from site to office. So when we're out on site our mappers can actually register reuse elements right from the building site. And it's a super easy workflow in the ACC App. We're able to attach information and locate the element. There's a lot of really good features in the App, and it just creates a mobile attachment for anyone on site to be able to register things in the project in the same platform.

There it is, registered in the App. OK, I'm going to hand it on to Brede to say a little bit about how we're planning to reach these environmental goals.

BREDE STOKLAND: All right, guys. So we are working towards a greener world, where reuse of resources in existing building projects are a key factor to tackle the global emission crisis. So now I think I know what you're all imagining when you see this picture. This isn't all that aesthetically pleasing, right? So I've facilitated the making of this picture through an AI generator, and the prompt was something like imagine the strip in Las Vegas designed using reused materials.

And so when we mention reuse, most people, and apparently AI generator as well, think-- tend to imagine a world where buildings look like a collage of waste materials. Luckily I'm here to at least try to inform you that reuse could be different.

So I want us to imagine a world where we build our cities on the basis of existing resources, where circular materials contribute to both financial uprising, but also emission savings. Where used building materials are not regarded as waste, but rather resources for future use, and with the potential of reuse. With the right digital tools and the right data designers and architects can make reuse projects that are truly beautiful and indistinguishable from a project made by using new materials.

So before we delve into hard core circularity and technology, I want to take a minute and describe how we as a northern startup work. We're working around the concept of open innovation, which in simple terms means that we're getting information and sharing insights from outside our own and others' organizations. So as a small tech firm, we can obviously not afford to spend time on building software for a user group that actually does not want this software. And that's why we wrote before this summer invited Norway's leading architectural firm, hence our attendee here tonight with Nordic.

So through our partnership with these actors we get to feel the industry's real pain points, on both a functionality level, but also on a methodology level. This cannot only be done through user interviews, but through projects with real people, and real problems. And since I'm with here with Bridget, she's a real person with real problems. So as a tech psychologist, this is how we're going to help her.

At Twin Solutions we help the AEC reduce its CO2 emissions by making used materials usable for those who own them and those who seek them. We want to achieve circularity through a business to business platform that intertwines the different stakeholders of a reuse project, that being the material providers, the designers and architects, and the real estate developers. So just a little info about that. So the providers, when we say material providers we mean real estate developers. It could be suppliers and also marketplaces that want to sell their materials.

They have a couple of problems today. Obviously they can't always find a buyer. They lack the understanding of their own inventory, and poor communication with the professional segment of the market. The designers are architects, and also technical consultants, engaged in a sustainable project. Some of their problems is limited knowledge about what materials actually exists, either in their own donor building, but also outside sources, limited design exploration and more frequent redesigns.

The developers are clients who want to buy or reuse their own materials or external materials to achieve green certification for one. Problems, excessive risks, difficult to set realistic ambitions, and it's hard to collaborate and manage the process. So for us reuse nerds something really awesome happened in Norway this summer, and Bridget mentioned it in the beginning here.

New legislation came into effect stating that every building over 200m? planned for demolition or rehabilitation must undergo a reuse assessment or a reuse mapping. And this is a process where a trained profession does a complete run through of the building and all its components. And this is on an object level, so a specific object. Describing them from a technical stand, functional stand, visual and geometrical. And this is a potential gold mine and game changer.

So I think this is a bold statement, but I believe that this is the first time in modern history national legislation has stated to gather data about existing resources for the future usage. It's a big game changer, and enables the rise of new design methodologies, new businesses, and also, of course emission savings.

So what's the downside? There's always a downside, and in this case, there are no standard that follows this legislation. There's no one saying, collect these parameters when mapping. And no one saying, use these tools when mapping. And the result of this is just in Norway around 10 new startups and also established firms rises within the field of mapping. Different tools, different AIs, different methods, and different integrations.

So we've worked with different pilots now. We've actually received word documents describing reuse materials. But most of the time we actually map or get mapping reports in Excel, which is somewhat machine readable. So the goal, the goal by this new legislation must, of course, be to stimulate the AEC sector to choose used resources in construction of both new buildings but also rehabilitation projects. To obtain CO2 savings, of course, and gain rewards, reporting towards EU taxonomy, for one. And but still have to stay cost efficient.

But this is at the time speaking not possible. We do not have the tools or methods to design new constructions on the basis of reused data. So one could state that reuse of materials in the building industry fails, because there is no connection between the material provider's data of reusable materials, and the way project teams and designers design new buildings.

Bear with me here, quite a big diagram, but one proposed solution is this integrated ecosystem. And I want to start from the left here. So material providers, as I stated earlier, could be a real estate developer who has a donor building that is mapped through an Excel spreadsheet. Or you can have suppliers in Norway that started to appear a couple of suppliers like someone who just aims on reuse of brick. They have a storage facility, and they describe their bricks through a marketplace, and through a database.

Point being, Twin Solution want to take this data, the data sources that are out there. Take them into our system, restructure them in a way that communicates efficiently with the architects and project teams. In our case, through the native environment of BIM. So this is how we connect physical materials to the digital workflows. The goal, of course, with this ecosystem is to provide end to end value for the developer and sustainable buildings for the future.

So how do we work around? How do we work with meaningful data? First of all, we aggregate. We collect data from these various providers. Then we enhance this data by converting and enriching it with and into standardized formats for us to read, so we can go through and move on to the 0.3 here, BIMification. So we turn the data into usable building blocks for BIM, compatible with BIM, and then apply them through a platform that I'll show soon, forward that data to the designers for planning design and coordination.

We have to visualize the data and the design options, the architects do, and analyze that data so we could integrate it back into the providers reservation and stock accounting systems. So at the moment, Twin Solution consists of three solutions. Twin provide is a web based data collection service for the material providers. And Twin teleport is a plugin for Revit, given the architect's instant access to a diverse range of reusable materials. And when gather is a web based channel for coordination of the project team for functionality as reservation of the material proposal from the BIM model.

So I'm going to go through all of them, provide us an application which enables the user to upload data through their applicable reuse inventory, and through either direct submissions or through an API integration. And the latter one is the one we've been working on most lately, and there are now a couple of mapping actors out there in Norway that we have fully automated integration towards. Which in simple terms means that our customers can use them for mapping, and us for design. And that's a huge time saver.

And Twin teleport, this is what we consider as the enabler for efficient design with reuse materials. Teleport makes data explorable, designable, directly in the native environment of the architect. And I'll get back to this one very soon.

Gather is a web based service for the remaining project team and decision makers who are not in directly in BIM. This being project leaders, contractors, building owners, and developers, among others. And the purpose of this service is to give the decision makers of a project easy access to what's cooking in the BIM model, without any exports needed. It's a synchronized channel that extracts data from the architect's BIM model, and from the architect's BIM design, with added functionality for purchase and reservation of reuse materials.

So I want to move on to why we're here, and I want to show Twin Teleport for Revit. So [? Twin ?] is a dockable plugin inside of Revit, where you could explore a range of materials. Like categories, here for instance doors, where you could read about the doors, have a better overview of the pictures. You see the metadata on the object, that being geometrically, visually, functionally, and so on.

And then the thing here is, of course, that every object in our database has an associated digital twin. And in this case a family file, Revit family file associated to the data. Moving on. You could also work with dynamic materials like coverings, so for in this instance, brick, and apply it directly to the model. You could choose where in the structures of the wall you want to work. In this case just the interior finish. Yeah.

And we have other static objects, of course. Like windows being one, which is an extremely difficult object to actually reuse, but we want to understand the object digitally now. And then you could also work with how to go from a generic object to a specific one. So in this case, I've have a bunch of generic windows here that's only like it has the outer dimensions and I believe a U value. And then I as an architect could work with the tolerances, and use the data, the computer's exceptional processors, to actually find matching elements. In this case, we went from generic windows to a specific reuse window, which did have a bit higher height, but the other criterias were spot on.

And then you have to keep track of all your material usage, right, and you have to also preserve it. So in the reservation tab you could have an overview of all the materials you've added to your design. In this case, a door, a couple of windows, and some covering materials. And you can reserve them right away, which sends a signal to the web application Gather, telling your project team that these are interesting elements to work with.

All right. Let's see. Load again. All right. Try around this one. Bridget, so with these integrations of new technology and workflows for the optimization of rehab and reuse, what can we envisage our projects for the future to look like?

BRIDGET WHITE: Well, Brede, we can expect that existing buildings will be more thoroughly examined and documented for their potential. In conjunction with the new projects vision, or as act as a catalyst for the project's future design. Here's an example of an existing building. And its future self.

So how do we go from the existing to the new, and using our ideas for digitalization? Firstly, we can envisage that existing buildings will all be scanned. They'll be modeled correctly and efficiently, and they'll also be mapped for reuse.

[INAUDIBLE] slabs, for example. [? Power cords. ?] Ceilings, and other objects for reuse. It will be collaborated and communicated within the cloud. Everyone who needs access to information will have access, and we'll all understand the conditions of the existing building site in a much more in-depth fashion, based on data.

This collaboration platform, which we're suggesting to be the ACC cloud, offering us a lot of the features that we've been looking for in terms of lodging information, sharing information, and tracking in digital trails. So in our digitalized collaborative form, there will be a new level of understanding for what we have to increase our chances of re-use from an early phase.

And strategically aligning ourselves with software companies that are providing us the connection from generic identified for re-use, to real actual products with correct parameters, so we can understand what we've got and be able to use it in our future designs. We'll also have an understanding for reuse object status. And in this sense, we will be providing a circular digital trail, which we can track objects from the existing site to the new build, and we can also understand at what status these reuse elements are sitting at. So Brede, how will Twin Solutions role be within the future of circularity and our future projects?

BREDE STOKLAND: All right, so I think first of all, we need trustworthy data. And we're getting there. The sources we have are quality controlled, through different actors, and hopefully the new legislation that we've gotten in Norway of the reuse mapping helps us along the way towards standardization.

Secondly, we have to portray the data to architects and developers in a pleasing matter for them to actually move towards greener material choices. And lastly, we do believe that it's crucial to stay in the native environment for the architects.

BRIDGET WHITE: So here we are starting from the basement with this, the reused basement. With this technology and workflow we can begin to form a digitalized overview of the new situation, and an overview of the integrated reuse elements in our new project, from which we can begin to extract performance data. So here I can see where my new elements are, the ambition for the elements to be replaced in my new model, and all the data associated with those reused elements able to be extracted. You give us a complete overview of our new condition.

And with this we can form a digitalized report, which we're hoping will allow us to present alternatives to our clients, showing the environmental impact of designing with reuse. So if we could say as architects that we present two alternatives. One in a regular construction methodology, and one where we have incorporated the reuse elements, and show the difference in performance, or the difference in impact that we can achieve by meeting our environmental goals.

And with this we're hoping to sell in better performing, low impact designs, based on real rehabilitation and reuse data. And the difference is in the facts. And I think this is a really exciting development in the industry. And digitalization is the way that we can work together to achieve our goals. Thank you very much for your time.