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Circular best practice hub

Project Idea Metadata

Project Idea Description

1. Brief introduction of the idea

We are developing a collaborative, digital hub for circular best practice construction projects, aligned with open-source principles. This platform enables the structured capture, sharing, and evolution of project-specific knowledge. By making best practices visible and accessible across all project phases, it empowers public clients, planners, and builders to learn from each other and accelerate innovation.

The hub supports a sustainable, circular approach to project management by treating knowledge as part of a living ecosystem – continuously reflected upon, reused, and refined. It fosters collaborative learning, supports data-driven decisions, and transforms documentation into a dynamic foundation for long-term, systemic change in the construction industry, moving away from siloed thinking toward a culture of transparency, connectivity, and continuous improvement.

2. What challenge in the circular building and construction industry does your idea address?

Circular infrastructure construction is hindered by siloed thinking, limited transparency, and delayed or inaccessible knowledge. High costs and risks discourage innovative methods, making it difficult to scale successful practices. As a result, circularity and climate goals remain largely unmet—despite growing political pressure and the urgent need for systemic change.

3. What is your vision for solving this challenge, and why is your approach innovative? Who will benefit from a solution to this problem?

We propose an open-source platform to document and share projects in a standardized way, including all phases from concept to execution. Projects can be compared based on key indicators such as CO₂ emissions, circularity, cost, and stakeholder satisfaction. Our approach introduces a new model of collaborative knowledge development, breaking away from isolated work structures to support municipalities and infrastructure owners in achieving climate goals and help planners and builders to learn from each other’s project experiences.

Instead of individuals repeatedly facing similar challenges on their own, we bring together people at eye level, enabling knowledge to be accessed, validated, and expanded collectively. This lowers the barriers to implementing new ideas, and creates space for innovation—particularly in environments where the absence of precedent often leads to the abandonment of promising concepts.

An internal AI-powered platform interface (LLM) enables targeted access to unstructured project data provided by project stakeholders while ensuring data security. It assists in identifying relevant knowledge patterns across projects. Rather than replacing human expertise, AI augments it—supporting the creation of a dynamic, evolving knowledge ecosystem. Much like open-source communities, this system enables knowledge to grow through active participation, feedback, and shared refinement.

4. How could your idea positively impact the planet, people, or economy in the future?

The buildings and construction sector is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, accounting for 37% of global emissions (UN, 2023). In Switzerland, 40% of construction involves public projects (Baumeisterverband, 2023). Emerging technologies such as CO2 storage in concrete (10% reduction), recycled asphalt (40% CO2 reduction, OST, 2021), and real-time infrastructure monitoring (potentially complete avoidance of emissions) have significant potential to reduce emissions. Faster knowledge transfer will ensure these technologies are used, leading to a better infrastructure, improving livability and reducing costs for everyone, while fostering a collaborative environment among professionals that encourages continuous learning and innovation.

5. What assumptions or ideas do you want to test? What do you plan to work on during the booster program, and what is your goal to deliver at the end?

We want to test if public actors are ready to share detailed project data during planning and if structured documentation and evaluation adds real value to future projects. Our assumptions are:

• Public clients rely on evidence to justify ambitious choices. Infrastructure project stakeholders see value in sharing project knowledge to learn from future projects.

• The effort to gather the project data is feasible as it just needs to be drawn from local data silos which generally have similar structures.

• AI can help structure and retrieve fragmented project knowledge, so that it can be adopted to new projects with little manual effort.

During the program, we will:

• Interview municipalities and planners to understand user needs and willingness to share data.

• Collect a first project data set to test feasibility.

• Build a mock-up of the documentation platform and AI powered interface.

At the end, we aim to deliver a clickable demo and a plan for further co-development with pilot partners.

6. Has your idea been tested before? If yes, what were the results, and what remains to be tested?

We’ve discussed the idea with several municipalities and planners, who confirmed the lack of accessible reference projects. These discussions have shown that interest in sharing and access to data is high on part of the municipalities and public infrastructure owners.

What remains to be tested is the conceptual implementation of the knowledge sharing platform, what data should be shared and in which format. In addition, the right incentives for sharing data have to be evaluated. Several existing AI tools show promising potential to tackle the challenge, but will have to be further analyzed.

7. Who is in your team, and what expertise or roles do they bring?

Vivian Hauss (MSc ETH) founded Bluehub and brings 7 years of experience in infrastructure and water management. He connects climate strategy with practical planning.

Marco and Andy Disch (both MSc ETH) are experts in data-driven consulting in the construction and environmental engineering sectors, with a particular focus on wastewater. They bring deep technical knowledge and extensive experience in data structuring, control systems, and Building Information Modeling (BIM).

Dr. Konrad Graser is a lecturer of digital construction processes and management at the ZHAW Institute for Building Technology and Process. His research interests are the socio-technical and collaborative processes in the adoption of digital and circular innovations in the construction industry, integrated delivery models for circular construction and digitally enabled planning and manufacturing methods.

8. How do you plan to secure the 10% third-party funding required?

We are in contact with two private engineering firms with interest in supporting the development of tools for circular construction. Additionally, we are in contact with four municipalities who could share their projects and might be open to help with the funding. Attached you find two declarations of interest from the ARA Thurau and the swiss sewage association (VSA). Also a meeting with the city of Zürich will take place on the 14.4.2025.

🎯 Goal:

To create a digital hub for circular infrastructure projects that enables public clients, planners, and builders to share knowledge, learn from each other, and scale sustainable practices. The platform aims to transform siloed project data into a living, collaborative resource that drives innovation and climate impact.

🔍 Problem:

At the current pace of change, the construction sector is unlikely to meet the 2030 climate goals due to:

💡 Solution: