Minimizing impact of construction material flows in cities: Innovative Co-Creation

Many European cities are experiencing a construction boom. Construction activities and machinery add to the congestion of already heavily utilized infrastructure, and to air and noise pollution. Negative impacts of construction site activities are caused by lacking coordination, planning, and consolidation of construction material flows. The overall goal of MIMIC is to demonstrate how implementing smart governance concepts in the construction and city planning processes reduce such negative impacts on the surrounding communities. By facilitating and supporting improved logistics to, from and on urban construction sites the MIMIC project aims to reduce the negative impacts of construction sites. Good handling of institutional, social and economic barriers to transferability and scalability requires a solution for planning, coordinating and controlling logistics activities for building sites within several stakeholder levels; cities and municipal authority level, building process' actors and suppliers, and owners' decision-makers (public and private). The project forms an iterative process, where developments in analysis and identification of construction logistics scenarios and stakeholders (under WP1), implementation of impact assessment framework (under WP2) and data analysis and optimization of construction logistics processes (under WP3) are continuously applied by the implementation partners for testing of individual tools, built into smart governance concepts (under WP4). The project started in November 2018, spent one month on preparation and planning forconsortium meetings (twice per year with skype follow-ups). The kick-off meeting was in Viennain January 2019. In the meeting, the overall objective of the project and how stakeholder identification, logistics solutions, optimization and impact assessment methods, national policies and regulations can be implemented in the Smart Governance concepts, which fit in different national settings, have been discussed. MAMCA (multi-actor multi-criteria analysis) tool and construction logistics game was played by the partners and discussed how to further develop in the MIMIC project. After the kick-off, interview guide was developed, to map the status of the current practice, identify challenges and opportunities to minimize the impact from construction logistics by promoting zero or low emission construction logistic solutions. The preliminary findings from state-of-the-art study and interview results were presented to the partners in May 2019, in the consortium meeting in Brussels. In the Brussels meeting, there have been joint workshops focusing on 1) project plan and collaboration, 2) game workshop - playing the new version of MIMIC game and the game from Austrian partners "Mobility is a serious game" 3) Smart Governance workshop - how the concept fit in the different national settings discussed. The meeting in Brussels was concluded with site visit "The Usquare project". The Norwegian partners arranged a workshop with all national and international partners present, in Oslo in December 2019. In addition to updates from all partners on the status from each work package, three different subjects were presented and discussed in mini-workshops; Construction logistics scenarios, Impact assessment, and Smart Governance Concept 2 (SGC 2.0). Also, a site visit to the first emission free construction site at a global scale, in Olav V's street in central Oslo, was carried out. Throughout the spring and summer of 2020, we have been working on the development of Construction Logistics Scenarios (WP1), Construction Logistic impact assessment framework (WP2), and background development for the Policy Framework (WP4). An online partner-meeting and workshop was performed in May 2020 and October 2020 due to the COVID-19 situation. "How do partners work strategically to reach their ambitions regarding emission reduction through logistics?" and "Legal framework and policy making" were the main discussion points in the two workshops, respectively. In 2021, among others, impact assessment framework, SGC 2.0 and legal and policy framework has been developed. An online workshop was performed in March 2021 with presentations on methodologies for impact assessment, MAMCA, a PhD thesis, followed by discussions on SGC 2.0 and future collaboration after MIMIC. A hybrid project closing conference was held in November 2021 with wider audience with presentation of main project findings, lessons learned from implementation partners and discussions on possible areas for further developments. In MIMIC, all project partners actively involved in realising of the project ambitions within the project period and budget. All project results disseminated through different channels are available in project webpage. The cooperation between the research partners, and with all the pilot demonstration partners, have been close, fruitful, and well-functioning.

The main result from MIMIC, Smart Governance concept which integrates several tools developed within the project, is expected to support relevant actors in the value chain to improve the integration of construction logistics issues in the urban planning, to set up ambitious goals, evaluate, implement, and follow up alternative construction logistic solutions. The tools developed within the project can enable public and private sectors a decision support platform for urban development, including analysis and optimization of construction site transport, low emission construction logistics solutions, as well as a framework for sustainable impact assessment. As the tools developed within the project are tested using pilots from implementing countries, the project results are expected to have high practical relevance in urban planning. Furthermore, the results from MIMIC project will contribute to several of the UN sustainable development goals (SDG) including: SDG9, SDG11, SDG12, SDG13.

The purpose of MIMIC is therefore to demonstrate how SMART Governance concepts can be used as an aid in the construction and city planning processes to facilitate and support logistics to, from and on urban construction sites to improve mobility and reduce congestion within cities and thereby reduce the negative impact of construction sites on the surrounding community. This is done by 1) analysis and identification of construction logistics scenarios (both on and off site) highlighting the relation between project context and logistics solution; 2) stakeholder involvement and management throughout the different project phases, through identification of stakeholders and stakeholder objectives in a participatory MAMCA and gaming 3) implementation of a sustainability impact assessment framework to evaluate the economic, social and environmental performance of the construction logistics scenarios; 4) enhanced data collection and optimization of construction logistics processes to evaluate and visualize the different construction logistics scenarios, using dynamic data technologies; 5) combine 1-4 into a SMART Governance Concept 2.0; 6) deployment of the SMART Governance Concept 2.0 to eliminate functional barriers for implementation 7) transferability and scalability of construction logistics scenarios and the SMART Governance concept 2.0 across European cities. In Oslo, the MIMIC solutions will be used by the municipality in a local demonstrator to test the applicability of the methods and solutions to reduce negative impact of construction activity. The focus will be on improving transport logistics and the implementation of Smart Governance Concept to facilitate decision making based on multiple actors input. The demonstrator will be conducted in cooperation with HENT, one of Norway’s largest contractors. The demonstrator will be a 14 300 sqm nursing home under construction Q2 2019 – Q3 2020 in Oslo.