Last year, Quake initiated the ‘BuildUPspeed’ project, which aims to capitalize on the results and outcomes of relevant H2020 projects on deep renovation. Specifically, it focuses on projects and actions related to prefabrication, BIM adaptation for renovation, and industry 4.0.
Deep renovation is crucial for European buildings to meet the 2050 decarbonization targets. However, numerous barriers on both the supply and demand sides hinder building renovation from scaling up effectively in both the private and public sectors. Fortunately, several projects, including some led by Quake, have already developed innovative solutions for deep renovation as part of the EU Renovation Wave. These projects offer comprehensive people-centered approaches that involve the entire value chain. Despite this progress, a major obstacle remains: the lack of market uptake strategies to leverage the technical and non-technical solutions developed over the past five years. This challenge is critical for both policy and market perspectives and represents a missed opportunity for EU-funded projects.
To tackle this issue, the BuildUPspeed project, as a CET LIFE initiative, aims to address this gap by harnessing the power of industrialization in the building industry.
The BuildUPspeed project focuses on five key pillars. First, it clusters efforts and capitalizes on existing evidence. Second, it conducts an inventory of end-user needs, actors and capacities, material and energy flows, and buildings and spaces within a local context, such as the neighborhood or eco-system level. This step is crucial before developing a market activation hub. Third, the project digitizes these key outputs, making them appealing and easily accessible to end-users through a virtual Market Activation Hub on an online open-source platform. The Hub brings together supply and demand, defining the market for modular deep-renovation products and concepts. Fourth, BuildUPspeed introduces the concept of fully automated ‘Local’ or ‘Pop-up’ factories and implements them as pilots in five locations. Lastly, the project provides attractive and understandable information on evidence-based performances of renovated buildings to users and owners. This information showcases the potential of industrialized solutions in reducing the performance gap, both in terms of energy and indoor environmental quality (IEQ).
For more information about the BuildUPspeed project, please visit their website at www.buildupspeed.eu.
