SGBC Digitalisation and Sustainability in the Green Building Industry – 7^th Joint seminar between JTC and SGBC

Building The Future Through Digitisation

By Lekha Patmanathan for ABC Carbon Express

Innovate to be sustainable. Disrupt or be Disrupted.

Similar sentiments were echoed from the diverse panel at SGBC and JTCs joint seminar on Digitalization and Sustainability in the Green Building industry on May 10th. More than 50% of the world’s population live in cities today and the United Nations project 1 in 3 people will urban dwellers by 2050. The building and construction sector as an industry has come a long way since the Stone Ages. In a world of finite resources, green building principles and technologies are the cornerstone of responsible building with the future in mind.

The president of Singapore Green Building Council (SGBC) Dr Ho Nyok Yong, emphasised the urgent need to change the way in which we build. Even Jurong Town Corporation (JTC) with a 50-year track record in design, build and management of 600 million square foot of built spaces, Mr Heah Soon Poh, the Assistant CEO of the Engineering and Operations, spoke about need to be tech-enabled and data-driven organisation. Their Integrated Digital Delivery approach oversees the entire building cycle from design through to construction and operations. Digitalised design enables the optimal passive design strategies to be achieved, lowering construction errors and material wastage thus optimisation of site resources. JTC have a centralised Building Optimisation Systems (JTC BOS) pulls operational data from all assets and uses Fault Detection and Diagnostics to manage and maintain its buildings.

Homegrown civil and infrastructure construction company, Samwoh, is the leading asphalt supplier in Singapore with quarries in Indonesia and Malaysia. Aside from building roads and runways, Senior Technical Manager Dr Kelvin Lee, shared about their Innovation Centre their key focus area in recycling R&D and material science. They are circularizing the economy by recycling more than 1 million tonnes of construction waste annually into concrete aggregate (RCA) so it re-enters the value chain. They are currently testing incinerated bottom ash (IBA) for as a base layer in roads, scrap tires in roads to reduce noise and plastic waste for construction. Samwoh has digitized fleet management, smart paving systems and laser crack measurement systems to increase quality, consistency and safety while reducing manpower needs.

Energy is getting more electric and digitised, more decarbonised and decentralised. Damien Dhellemmes of Schneider Electric spoke about these global trends and how it is transforming proptech for good. The convergence of IT and OT accelerated by IoT creates a more connected built architecture. Seamless data transfer, analytics and insights in real-time brings a new level of understanding to building health allowing facility managers to optimise the energy process and transition from time-based to condition-based maintenance.

Mann+Hummel are using similar approaches by adding intelligence in filtration to alert building managers during times of high particulate counts. Innovation in green buildings extends beyond brick & mortar and to improving quality of life.  We spend a staggering 90% of our time indoors, according to Global Partnerhips Director Joelle Chen, which is why indoor environment quality is so important. She likened Mann+Hummels technology as a Fitbit for your building. An American study on 10 buildings show healthier indoor environments results in healthier employees. A local study correlated an absenteeism and air quality. Currently a two-year performance study is being conducted in Asia to further prove that better air leads to better health.

To drive global CO2 emissions reduction, decarbonisation is key and is best accomplished through a combination of energy efficiency and renewable energy. To accomplish this Energy Smart Solutions, an NTU spin-off led by Dr Alessandro Romagnoli, demonstrated a technology for optimising master planning of greenfield project with smart integrated energy mix planning. E-OPT is a software to optimise energy consumption meet complex and dynamic user demands, from design through to operations. In future the question on how best to settle energy and cooling demands will only be handled in the cloud, data crunching equipment scheduling, storage, weather and equipment selection to yield the most optimal and efficient results.

In the era where the real estate industry is going through unprecedented changes, digitisation makes the invisible visible to bring insights to, quantify and support sustainability goals.