REBUILD - REgenerative BUILDings and products for a circular economy

Completed

Energy Efficiency(Residential and commercial)
Not Energy Related
Energy Efficiency(Industry)

Basic and strategic applied research

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Civil Engineering)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Mechanical, Aeronautical and Manufacturing Engineering)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Architecture and the Built Environment)

Not Cross-cutting
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Environmental dimensions)

Professor P Hopkinson
Management
University of Exeter

Standard

EPSRC

01 February 2017

24 October 2017

9 months

£1,034,547

Civil eng. & built environment

South West

Manufacturing : Manufacturing

Professor P Hopkinson, Management, University of Exeter

Professor K Barber, Faculty of Management and Law, University of Bradford
Professor P Bartolo, Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, University of Manchester
Professor D Lam, School of Engineering and Informatics, University of Bradford
Professor L Li, Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, University of Manchester
Professor Y Wang, Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, University of Manchester

Project Contact, Alliance for Sustainable Building Products
Project Contact, BAM Construct UK
Project Contact, Leeds College of Building
Project Contact, Ellen Macarthur Foundation
Project Contact, National Federation of Demolition Contractors (NFDC)
Project Contact, Ove Arup & Partners Ltd
Project Contact, Manchester City Council
Project Contact, Eco-Res Limited
Project Contact, Knowledge Transfer Network Limited
Project Contact, North Yorkshire County Council
Project Contact, British Constructional Steelwork Association
Project Contact, City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council
Project Contact, Leeds City Council
Project Contact, Building Research Establishment (BRE) Limited

In a circular economy value is created by keeping products and materials 'in flow' through effective recirculation and re-use to optimise their highest economic potential and minimise the use of virgin materials and external environmental costs. New construction and existing building stocks present the highest potential for circular economy innovation, value retention and creation opportunities, estimated to be worth approximately Euro 450 - 600M p.a. Innovation in the reclamation of currently hard to re-use building products - concrete, steel, brick, from end of service life (EOSL) buildings and their remanufacture into new modular products for new builds which would then be designed for future deconstruction, is therefore a major economic opportunity.REBUILD proposes that materials are directly reused and remanufactured into new builds with minimal re-processing. The project proposes a new circular economy system to address key barriers in the current linear approaches to demolition and new building construction, and build capabilities and tools to create significant new value by the early adoption of novel technologies, high value remanufacture, new system arrangements and the scaling up good practices. The magnitude of the opportunity is considerable. Existing buildings were not designed for adaptation, dis-assembly, or high value reuse. Therefore, the current option is to demolish them when they reach EOSL. In the UK approximately 50,000 buildings are demolished each year generating 45Mt of wastes, the majority of this is concrete and masonry, brick and steel. Of this 45Mt, only a small percentage is reclaimed, mostly for heritage products or easily demountable structures such as steel sections from portal frames. EOSL buildings are treated as costs to be minimised with speed of clearance commercially critical and a subsequent major loss of embedded carbon, energy, materials and potential value.For circularity to become mainstream in the building construction industry, it is imperative that barriers to reuse hard to deconstruct buildings, including using cement mortar based masonry, reinforced concrete, steel-concrete composite structures, which account for the vast majority of UK construction tonnage and cost, must be removed.REBUILD starts the process of converting all current building at the end of their first life and future buildings into material and product banks allowing the retention of high value materials and products for future repeat reuse. The cost of transport and storage means that repair, remanufacture and reuse of products to be commercially successful will need to be regional/local scale. To create demand acceptance for re-used products REBUILD testing processes are designed to demonstrate industry standards of quality assurance of technical performance.Creating demand requires a system re-design and co-ordination to integrate all the activities in the value chain including construction and manufacture, demolition and other key activities (financing, public procurement, planning), in new ways to collaborate to unlock and share value from product re-use. This integration is likely to be optimal at city scale within a circular economy regional hub. This system design will be created and modelled with our industrial stakeholders. The project will quantify, measure and evaluate the magnitude of value creation and product re-use for different system configurations and scenarios against a Business as Usual (BAU) reference case. Continual interactions with the industrial stakeholder group, and through their networks the wider construction industry, will make sure that the direction of our project stays close to industrial needs and the outcomes of our research are communicated to the industry in the most effective way.

07/02/19