Our joint workshop in Greece and Cyprus under the scope of the Horizon-funded project RECONMATIC has successfully concluded, as part of a series of national workshops that have been taking place in 6 European countries – they are completed in Cyprus, Greece, Spain, Italy, the UK and the Czech Republic. Future Needs and our Greek partners, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and ANAKEM hosted a joint online workshop for Greece and Cyprus on the 21st of March 2024. 

These workshops were organised and hosted by several RECONMATIC partners and aim to share with the construction sector stakeholders the progress on an open-source digital tool, developed within the project. This tool will guide the implementation and assessment of circularity and sustainability practices in different processes and stages of the life cycle of Construction and Demolition Waste. It will also complement the digital and automated solutions developed by the project and will be available for free use by anyone interested.  

During the workshops, several professionals from the construction field (architects, engineers, designers, and waste managers) gave their end-user insights to support the development of the tool’s features, by validating a selection of environmental, economic, social, and circularity indicators. 

We got insights regarding additional explanations required for some indicators or questions related to each indicator that need to be adapted to the different user profiles. Overall, the attendees pointed out that the tool was a source of inspiration, as it raised issues that are not obvious but are important, thanks to their holistic approach and global perspective. Other discussions revolved around the tool’s potential use for future applications and its integration into other tools widely used in the industry, like management systems.  

For Greece and Cyprus, the stakeholders claimed that despite the European Union’s efforts to establish unified legislation across its member states, these countries still need to implement these regulations. This discrepancy leads to growing pains as nations strive to catch up and align with EU standards, resulting in their inability to be ready to use these tools.  

The Future Needs team would like to thank the participants of the workshops for their time and their useful insights regarding the tool, which will allow the whole team to improve it and tailor it to the needs of its final users—also, many thanks to all the partners who organised and led these workshops. 

An international workshop for the tool validation is planned for September 2024. The workshop aims for the final tool validation by the construction stakeholders to be tailored to their needs. Their expertise and feedback from the sector professionals will contribute to the wider impact of this tool application.  

If you are a professional in the construction sector and interested in participating in this workshop, please contact our RECONMATIC project Manager Ioannis Koutsos or Georgia Nikolakopoulou, leading dissemination and exploitation for Business and Education for the RECONMATIC project.

Stay tuned for more information on our activities and follow us on Linkedin and Twitter to be updated about our activities.