As you may have noticed, between 9 and 11 April, the Amsterdam RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre was completely dominated by Building Holland, where thousands of professionals got together to share knowledge and to network, to study innovative products and concepts and to do business. And, at the Green Tie gala, Onno Dwars won the ‘ABN AMRO Duurzame 50 award 2019’—many congratulations! During the presentation of the award, last year’s winner, Thomas Rau, held an impressive and eloquent speech (in Dutch) for those in attendance. Circularity was a much-discussed subject, during Building Holland, which is not surprising considering the attention for energy in the built environment and for resource scarcity. The conference ‘Nationale Werkconferentie’ of Cirkelstad paid a large amount of attention to circular and inclusive construction practices. During the conference, Pablo van den Bosch, board member of the Madaster Foundation, emphasised the importance of a digital twin within the built environment. Did you miss it?

EDGE Technologies stimulate circular construction using material passports
Over the past year, EDGE Technologies has successfully been working with the Madaster Platform and completed a comprehensive Madaster registration of the EDGE Olympic building. This building has the highest Madaster CI score of all the EDGE developments. The 3D environment of EDGE Olympic shows the many circular components that contributed to it’s score. This provides insight into the building’s circularity and all the materials that have been identified for future reuse. Because of this success, EDGE intends to register all its yet-to-be-developed buildings in Madaster and also provide them with a material passport.

Material passport introduced in Taiwan
On 25 March, Rob Oomen (Partnership Manager Madaster) and Simone Sars-Huijser van Reenen (Business Development Manager Asia) set off on their second trip to Taiwan. Their first, successful visit in November 2018, centred around them becoming familiar with Taiwan and its ambitions with respect to circularity in construction. This time, they participated in a delegation of innovative companies, led by municipal executive Klaas Verschuure (Economic Affairs). During their visit, Madaster signed agreements with the Taiwan Construction and Research Institute and Topone International Consultants.
 
‘It is good to see that Taiwan intends to make the transition to a circular economy, and we are very proud to be a part of this. By introducing the concept of material passports in Taiwan and initiating demonstration projects, we also hope to contribute to the elimination of waste within Taiwan’s built environment.’  Simone Sars-Huijser van Reenen.

Use Madaster to complete your environmental permit
Are you planning new construction or demolition? The application for an environmental permit for such endeavours requires an environmental performance report (MilieuPrestatieGebouwen (MPG)). An MPG shows the environmental burden of the materials contained in a building and is an important measure of sustainability. The lower the burden according to the MPG, the more sustainable the material use. The MPG tool is part of the sustainable construction software company ‘GPR Gebouw’, and is thus a methodology for measuring sustainability in construction, recognised by the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. On the basis of Madaster data, the MPG tool by the W/E Consultants foundation can be used to conduct an MPG calculation. 

BOOM! Innovatie helps to realise circular ambitions
The Madaster Partner Programme aims to create value for partners and their customers. Many companies, such as TBI, W/E Consultants and CBRE, have meanwhile become a Madaster partner. In order to provide more support to these partners in their efforts to put their circular ambitions into practice, Madaster has entered into a partnership with BOOM! Innovatie, who have been active in the field of circular economy, for years now. They have developed a number of methods to help companies initiate, realise and optimise the circularity of their business models.     
 
‘The change towards circular thinking and, therefore, also towards a circular business model, gives many companies a reason for going back to the drawing board. At BOOM! Innovatie, we consider the material passport an obvious opportunity for companies in the construction sector to develop distinguishing value propositions.’ – Freek Huijsmans, co-founder of BOOM! Innovatie.

VDNDP uses material passports to build on the circular economy
Madaster and VDNDP will start a development process to link material and product data of a certain construction plan automatically to a material passport. In this way, it will become even easier, in the future, to generate a material passport from multiple data sources. 
 
‘In addition to the production of useful BIM models, VDNDP also supplies architectural plans. We would like to apply this specification expertise for further enhancement of the digitisation process. Linked specifications that, in addition to product characteristics, also include construction and assembly methods of elements/objects are indispensable to ensure optimal use of a material passport, in the future.’  Wilma Visser, partner VDNDP.