Living lab Circular Demolition Teams

Circular Demolition Teams makes Flanders' construction sector more circular by bringing partners together

Demand for selective demolition, reuse of building materials and high-quality recycling of waste streams from the construction sector is on the rise. The government is also encouraging more circular solutions. Yet it is not easy for the construction sector to realise these circular demolition ambitions. To bring together different partners from the sector and jointly research a viable formula, the Living Lab Circular Demolition Teams was established.

The demolition of buildings often proceeds in several stages that are separate from each other. The client, architect, contractor and other parties are mainly concerned with their own part of the works and there is too little driving force to engage in high-quality recycling and reuse. This results in a lack of information and knowledge sharing between the various parties and the disappearance of demolition waste into the landfill.

The aim of this Living Lab is to focus on new tendering forms and collaboration formulas to turn Flanders into an urban mining region. In doing so, reuse and recycling should increase by applying a more conscious and integrated approach to demolition projects.

Therefore, the concept of demolition teams, being a more conscious and integrated approach to demolition projects, will be investigated and tested. The project partners will start with theoretical elaborations of a demolition team, after which it will be tested in different demolition sites (living labs). Each of these living labs will have a different focus: on the process, on market forms and tenders, on specific materials and on a combination of the above.

At the same time, the consortium can delve deeper into the various problems involved in demolition and the production of demolition waste and look for possible solutions to these. It became clear from previous projects, for instance, that there is insufficient knowledge and practical solutions for smaller waste and material streams and that, as a contracting authority, it is not easy to set the right award criteria. But also that there is potential in existing tools such as the demolition inventory, the demolition succession plan and tender documents.

Outside the Living Labs, where the demolition team formula will be tested in real demolition projects, meeting rooms and co-creation sessions with interested partners will also be organised. In this way, the various parties within the value chain will be maximally involved to identify challenges, share visions and draw working paths to solutions.

Nationale Confederatie van het Bouwbedrijf

Partners Embuild Vlaanderen (lead partner), Buildwise, Stad Mechelen, Tracimat, NAV (Netwerk Architecten Vlaanderen), ROCKWOOL Belgium, Resulation (Knauf), Aclagro

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