Digital product passport for a sustainable construction process

The project “Digital Product Passport for a Sustainable Construction process” aims to create a prototype for a digital product passport focusing on sustainability and health- and environmental risks.

The goal is to gather open data currently stored in various digital systems and visually demonstrate how a digital product passport for building materials could look, function, and be used.

The digital systems from which data will be sourced in this preliminary study are eBVD (electronic construction product declaration), BASTA (performance declaration from an environmental and health perspective), and CCBuild (Center for Circular Building).The project will deliver a prototype of a digital product passport with data collected and compiled in a common “database” from several different systems: eBVD, BASTA, and CCBuild.

It will then be able to provide data to various stakeholders and processes during a product’s lifecycle, such as purchasing, construction trade, logbook for a building, management, and reuse.

Through the visualization of the product passport, the project will test and evaluate how information should be packaged and collected to streamline and create added value for suppliers, users, and other stakeholders in the chain.

A product’s content and sustainability data will be gathered and updated in one place to simplify and facilitate more reuse and increased circularity in the construction industry.A central and important part of the project is to work with open data; the information collected will be accessible to the market, and the information that the product passport will provide will be open to all stakeholders and parties in the market.

The digital product passport will assist both small and medium-sized enterprises as well as large market players by facilitating and streamlining information sharing.Connected to the project is a reference group consisting of stakeholders from material suppliers, industry associations, contractors, recyclers, and construction trade, who will be involved in defining the content and functionality of the digital product passport and participating in a smaller pilot test.The project will adhere to and align with the laws and standards emerging around digital product passports and data templates, and the project will also stay updated on initiatives related to the project idea.

The project will discuss how the ownership structure could look to ensure long-term sustainability and openness of the product passport.

Other areas identified as important for discussion include how other databases can connect, how to link environmental data from EPDs, and how changes to a product during its lifecycle could be documented, among others.

The goal is for the preliminary study, together with the reference group, to define a step-2 project involving various stakeholders and other declaration systems within the construction industry and related sectors.