New partnership for future construction projects

On 25 November, LIST and CFE signed a 5-year partnership agreement designed to address the various challenges in the construction sector.

Sustainability and circularity, digitisation, industrialisation, logistics, and more.... the construction sector is facing numerous challenges. And LIST and the CFE group are aiming to work together to tackle these challenges through research and innovation. The CFE group is active in the sectors of construction and renovation (with a presence in Luxembourg via its company CLE – Compagnie Luxembourgeoise d’Entreprise), multi-technical services, and property (in Luxembourg via their company BPI), as well as in the field of sustainable investments.

LIST and CLE have previously shown that by working together, innovation makes it possible to both boost economic performance and reduce environmental impacts through the development of shared on-the-spot logistics. Through the use of a Consolidation Centre (CCC), the organisation of bespoke kitting processes and the use of a specialist logistics provider, the pilot construction site at the AUREA tower in Differdange is the first of its kind in Luxembourg. Results show:  

• A 3-fold reduction in the number of in situ deliveries
• A 50% reduction in CO2 emissions for transport
• A 5% reduction in costs
• An increase in productivity of around 15%

To overcome the challenges facing them, the collaboration between LIST and CLE required information flows to be standarised, consolidating the various information systems used by construction businesses, from the supply chain to the customer.This experiment is fully in line with the development of the BIM (Building Information Modelling) model at CLE and research undertaken by LIST on digital twinning.

The collaboration has also resulted in changes on the ground and a move towards Lean Construction. This  "continuous improvement" approach aims to eliminate waste such as unnecessary travel, non-compliance, waiting time and production teams with inappropriate staffing levels. These are all issues that undermine relationships between stakeholders in construction projects, while also impacting worker health, companies' economic and financial performance and the overall environmental impact of the sector.

This partnership has allowed LIST and CFE to set out their ambitions to develop and promote solutions at a sector level, based on a level of digitisation sufficient to meet operational needs, the integration of all stakeholders (both upstream and downstream) and a systematic will to quantify and reduce environmental impacts. In fact, this is a challenge that LIST and CFE intend to tackle together over the next five years.