Project Overview

The award winning team from Forward Thinking Design has partnered with project management firm Ilimaf and the asset management software company Hardcat to develop a process, services and digital tools that enable organisations to take a circular economy approach to fitout design, construction and de-fit.

The components of this innovation are:
- the services (training, consultancy, de-fit diversion delivery)
- tools (Fitout C.E Supplier Directory and FTD Circular/Hardcat Lebosi digital platform)
- knowledge leadership (speaking and published resources)

Organisation

Forward Thinking Design

Team

Forward Thinking Design - Vanessa Cullen
Ilimaf - Julian Zambrano Vesga
Hardcat Pty Ltd

Project Brief

FTD, Ilimaf and Hardcat saw the need to create an efficient way for organisations to take a circular economy approach to fitout design, construction and de-fit.

The FTD Circular / Hardcat Lebosi digital platform provides a user-friendly solution to asset management data visibility and value extraction when it comes to fit out spaces and materials. This app positions places and spaces as valuable asset banks, rather than as receptacles of finishes, fixtures/fittings, furniture, plant and equipment destined for landfill.

The FTD Circular process starts with a site audit to review the fixtures, furnishings and materials that need to be placed on the asset register. The team provides the mobile hardware, digital tools and support needed to accurately capture the asset identities, quantities and other data.

From here client organisations and suppliers are able to track and manage their asset maintenance, life cycles, warranties, depreciation and deployment. This allows for asset lifecycles to be extended. At de-fit time the asset management platform and Directory are used to match assets with landfill diversion opportunites such as re-use, sale, donation and recycling.

Once diversion is completed this platform allows for detailed reporting to measure your impact and satisfy your waste and carbon reporting commitments with verified data. This data can also be used to inform government policy and initiatives.

Project Innovation/Need

Whilst there has been industry experimentation with having materials passports collated as resource registers for buildings, this experimentation has not extended to interior fitout and office furnishings to the level of detail of our solution.

To our best knowledge, an end-to-end data-led process of the nature of our 'track, trace, manage, divert and re-design' approach has not yet been developed anywhere else in the world.

We are designing and applying a process and digital platforms that provide multi-stakeholder visibility, across the whole of the fitout product lifecycle, across locations, to ensure that the best decisions are being made (by all parties) to create, retain and extend value within this circular economy.

Many have suggested that asset management data and process digitisation/automation has a key role to play in fitout circularity but very few have tested and measured it. Our project is yielding significant new case studies of the application of technology in powering circularity.

Design Challenge

The construction/demolition sector is the largest contributor to landfill each year - approximately 45% of all waste generated across the country. The constant turn-over of interior fit-out/refit and demolition constitutes a significant portion of this waste. The average commercial office space sends close to 80% of its furnishings to landfill every time it is refitted. The design challenge for us was to identify the barriers to circular economy and then change industry behaviour through re-designing these waste generating processes. We met the challenge through stakeholder research, data gathering and then providing digital tools and training to enable all stakeholders to change their 'business as usual' ways of working and instead embrace the circular economy.

Future Impact

When companies use our process, platforms and services we are able to significantly reduce the negative environmental impact of fitout design, construction and de-fit.

The construction/demolition sector is the largest contributor to landfill each year - approximately 45% of all waste generated across the country. The constant turn-over of interior fit-out/refit and demolition constitutes a significant portion of this waste.

Our project creates a better future by focussing on the circular economy principles of:
1) eliminate waste and pollution (through preventing specification and ordering of new where reusable furnishings are already available) and
2) circulate products and materials (at their highest value) (through prioritising and automating re-design, re-use/redeployment, repair, maintenance and diversion from landfill).