Optimising construction processes for prefabricated renovation

RENOMIZE is an EU Horizon Europe project* lead by Joanneum Research with 16 consortium members joining forces to leverage know-how and engineering innovations for more sustainable and efficient building renovation processes. This includes, but is not limited to, the use of novel building materials, pre-fabricated element production optimisations and innovative robotics solutions. This is done to meet four objectives:

1. Development of well-selected innovations tackling the most labour-demanding aspects of prefabricated renovation
2. Holistic process & product optimisation of the prefabricated renovation process
3. Demonstration and validation of the system’s versatility, its efficiency, and its effectiveness in reducing on-site execution times, costs, and disturbance.
4. Maximisation of the potential for uptake of process and product innovations of RENOMIZE to enable an increased renovation rate. ETH Zurich is responsible for the development of a BIM-based construction process simulation tool, which will combine the developments in on-site construction and off-site material production with the supply chain logistics required to ensure an efficient construction using pre-fabricated panels.

To do this, the IM group at ETH Zurich will:

1. Set up a process simulation based on case studies provided by consortium partners
2. Expand existing databases and catalogues for the exchange of building information across vendors.
3. Assess the impact of process alternatives considering process flow, costs, timing, waste and supply of produced construction material

This work has received funding from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI)