Tag: building
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Scaling up Building Sustainability Assessments with BIM Model Checker Tools
Sustainability of buildings is an essential topic – buildings and construction consume almost half of raw materials and one third of energy in Europe. Therefore, scaling up the building sustainability assessments and making them faster and more reliable is a key challenge. Panu Pasanen (Photo: Bionova) Building sustainability is evaluated with a Life Cycle Assessment…
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How BIM Can Serve Building Owners
Building Information Models typically end their active life after the construction phase. An experimental project was initiated to find out whether and how they can serve owners throughout the life cycle of a building. Gradia, the Jyväskylä Educational Consortium, provides education to students of all ages in central Finland. It has around 25,000 students, a…
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How BIM is Revolutionizing Building Control in Finland
BIM is becoming mainstream in building design, but building control is still predominantly based on paper documents and 2D drawings. A Finnish KIRA-digi experimentation project has demonstrated how BIM can speed up and improve the building permit process considerably. Three Finnish cities–Hyvinkää, Järvenpää, and Vantaa–are in the vanguard of model-based building control. Together with Evolta,…
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Monitoring Building Moisture with RFID – An Interview with Jarmo Tuppurainen
Water in the wrong places in a building is a problem that can lead to health issues and expensive repairs. I interviewed Jarmo Tuppurainen about an experimental project that tests how cheap, passive RFID sensors can help with moisture monitoring. I met Jarmo, the Technology Manager at Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, at the…
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User Interface With a Building – Interview with Esa Halmetoja of Senate Properties
Architect Mies van der Rohe once said that, “An office is a machine for working in.” From a maintenance person’s point of view that might be true. For a user, an office should offer a productive working environment. A pilot project, led by Esa Halmetoja of Senate Properties, is trying to find out how a…
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Developing New BIM Norms for Building Construction – Videos
BuildingSMART Finland has supplemented open building information modeling (BIM) guidelines in a project that is a part of the national KIRA-digi program. The project has published its first version of the new norms. Here are short video versions of my interviews with Tomi Henttinen and Tero Järvinen. They explain why the open IFC classification required an update and…
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Notes from the Nordic Smart Building Convention
The first Nordic Smart Building Convention took place in Helsinki on June 14 and 15, 2017. It was an inspiring event with great keynotes, tech talks, and an exhibition of smart building products and services. The event was organized by HUB13, a leading co-working space provider in Finland. I had met with the producer of…
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Notes from the Nordic Smart Building Convention
The first Nordic Smart Building Convention took place in Helsinki on June 14 and 15, 2017. It was an inspiring event with great keynotes, tech talks, and an exhibition of smart building products and services. The event was organized by HUB13, a leading co-working space provider in Finland. I had met with the producer of…
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Building with Recycled Plastics – Interview with Jeff Mintz of Envirolastech
Plastic waste is a huge global problem and we need viable solutions. In this interview with Jeff Mintz, CEO of Envirolastech, we discuss how plastic can be recycled and used as a building material in a unique way. Envirolastech, Inc, is a developer of thermoplastic technology that offers a cost-competitive alternative to wood and concrete in a…
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Reinventing the Building Envelope – Interview with Gordon A Geddes
In this interview with Gordon A Geddes, CEO of Lynx Systems, we talk about reinventing the building envelope. Gordon also gives great advice to innovators in the construction industry. Here are our discussion topics: Why Gordon became interested in innovation in the construction industry What are responsive building envelopes What it the problem with traditional…