Is the power of innovation hindered by controlled sustainability requirements?

Purpose and goal:

The purpose was to demonstrate a configurator for handling conflicts in climate requirements and how effect-based requirements can be used and followed up for sustainable house building. Demonstration of both the business perspective and a technical perspective (installation system) was carried out and resulted in a focus towards a more question-based approach and soft configuration.

A plan for a follow-up research project for standardized requirements in land instructions has been developed and implemented. Expected results and effects:

Demonstration of the soft configurator showed that a hard rule-driven configuration was not recommended. Of particular importance was that sustainability requirements are formulated so that these can be achieved in construction projects in different ways. Three important questions for land instructions: Keep a holistic view, not just climate requirements.

Types and requirements in a process favor cooperation with follow-up from all actors. A plan for follow-up research projects has been developed and implemented. Data collection and analysis will be carried out in 2024. Approach and implementation:

The project was carried out as two sub-projects with each actor in focus. Synergies between the sub-projects could be achieved by progressively moving the work forward based on insights from the sub-projects. The difficulties were that the municipalities´ work with the development of land instructions and the contractor´s internal development work with the configurator both went at a slower pace (influenced by e.g. the market situation) than was favourable for the data collection in the applied research project because the actors´ work was linked to project activities.