Prefabricated Solutions and Automated and Digital Tools for the optimisation of a Holistic Energy Refurbishment Process

This document is a review paper of the ongoing BERTIM (Building Energy renovation through Timber Prefabricated Modules) research project, which scopes an automated procedure of prefabricated timber modules for the energetic refurbishment of buildings. The Energy Refurbishment is envisaged as key strategy to reduce the energy impact of the building sector. In addition, it is necessary to enhance the use of materials with low primary energy demand from cradle to grave and carbon-footprints, as timber based building materials, which performance is suitable in terms of global warming potential, carbon footprint, resource use, pollution, solid waste and embodied energy, when considered over a building’s lifetime. In order to foster Energy Efficiency building retrofitting an urgent need for a holistic and integral building energy efficient renovation approach is required, from the data acquisition to the installation of the solutions in the building in order to reduce the renovation operations time. The adoption of prefabricated solutions for a deep building renovation, all together with the implementation of digital tools integrating the whole renovation process, will lead to reduce significantly the time in manufacturing and installation and consequently impact for users as well as get better quality in the process. In this context, BERTIM, a research and development collaborative project, develops a prefabricated solutions that provide the opportunity to renovate, improving energy performance, air quality, aesthetics, comfort, and property value at the same time, while ensuring low intrusiveness during renovation works. The development is based on timber high-energy performance prefabricated modules for energy rehabilitation to ensure important building primary energy consumption reduction through high insulation properties. They also integrate windows, insulation materials, collective HVAC systems, renewable energy systems and energy supply systems. By means of the safeguarding of the existing buildings structure and envelope and integrating the services, the work load on-site is minimised attenuating the inconvenience for the tenants, producing less dust and noise and achieving higher work productivity for the whole process and especially reducing installation time. Prefabricated modules integrate in the factory all the building components (new windows, balconies, pipes and ducts). In order to enable the integration with enough accuracy and effectiveness, a computer tool based in BIM is also being developed to implement the mass manufacturing methodology from design to manufacturing and allow a digital data flow among the involved stakeholders. The platform includes a methodology and support tools to capture a real building data (using laser scanning techniques) transferring it to a BIM-based Web3D environment and a building renovation project definition and communication with CNC manufacturing system, by means of the usage of BIM, minimising the risk of any possible pre-fabrication mistake. As a last step of the procedure, the automated and even robotic installation procedures will be considered in order to reduce time and ensure safety during the on-site installation.