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European taxonomy: “if it’s not binding, it won’t exist.”

Luxembourg: the creation of a Sustainability Academy 

1 April 2022 Comments (0) Architecture, Environment, Other, Real Estate, Technology

“Prefab and wood are the future of construction”

We already met them in a previous article: Wood Shapers is a Belgian-Luxembourg company active in real estate development and integrated solutions for wood construction. We asked Simon Cols, a business developer, and Philippe Courtoy, a wood expert, to give us their vision on the growing role of wood in commercial construction. 

Your credo is to use as much wood as possible for its sustainable and well-being properties and build as much as possible in the factory (off-site) thanks to prefabrication… 

Indeed. Prefabrication costs a little more initially but has a leverage effect on many elements. Moving the work from the site to the factory makes it possible, for example, to reduce the duration of construction (because a whole series of elements arrive ready-made and are reassembled as closely as possible to the delivery area), but also the traffic, drying times and above all the risk of errors on site. Not to mention that prefabrication makes it possible to overcome the shortage of human resources, since it is robots that do most of the work, but also employees will enjoy safer and more comfortable working conditions. In this dynamic, digitisation is an essential element. Wood has been using this technology for more than ten years. 

In addition, modular wood is part of a circular construction approach…

Exactly. Today, we build buildings thinking, upstream, of total dismantling. Hence the importance of digitisation, which allows for a precise configuration and inventory of each building element. Today, some wooden buildings can already be dismantled entirely. 

You make it sound easy…

Not entirely. This new way of working will only be possible if it is accompanied by fundamental changes in designing and executing a real estate project. By working much more upstream of a construction site. By planning better and anticipating logistics. A removable building must be built like a Lego, in a specific order. This allows several trades to work together in co-activity, but we must dare to do things differently and change our building standards. 

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