Innovative solutions to improve the logistics management of urban construction sites

Published on 26/05/2015

On 26 and 27 May, the kick-off meeting of the European research project SUCCESS was held in Luxembourg, with the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) as project coordinator. Backed by 3.24 million Euros, SUCCESS is one of the flagship projects of the "Smart, Green and Integrated Transport" challenge within the European funding programme Horizon 2020. The project unites institutions and businesses around a shared challenge, that of reducing the transport of building materials and its impact on cities. Several pilot sites will be launched, including one in Luxembourg City, at a construction site in the Neudorf quarter.

Construction, at the core of urban logistics

The populations of cities are constantly increasing. By 2050, 82% of the European population will be living in urban areas. This gives rise to significant needs, not only in terms of infrastructure, but also in terms of new construction work and the renovation of existing buildings, which, in turn, entails an increase in the influx of building materials to these cities. In addition, the construction industry also generates a significant amount of waste, which needs to be removed from the cities ("reverse logistics"). For city-dwellers, all these activities go hand in hand with pollution, traffic congestion, noise, damaged infrastructure and, ultimately, a compromised quality of life. Today, the construction industry already represents 50% of overall freight transport within cities. (Source: the National Union of Aggregate Producers, 2012)

Solutions with a long-term effect

This is the context of the SUCCESS project which has just been launched within the "Smart, Green and Integrated Transport" challenge of the European funding programme Horizon2020. Its aim is to reduce the harmful effects of urban freight distribution, as well as its cost, by proposing innovative solutions applicable throughout Europe. To this end, the project team will examine the extent to which the concepts of "Supply Chain Management" and in particular a "Construction Consolidation Centre" - CCC) can contribute towards reducing the harmful effect of the influx of building materials to cities. Four construction sites located in Paris, Valencia, Verona and Luxembourg will provide case studies. Located in high-density urban areas with significant traffic congestion issues and certain environmental constraints, these pilot sites will allow for collection of the data required to devise suitable solutions, and put forward concrete demonstrators.

Finally, gains in terms of the number of trips, vehicles travelling at full-load capacity, kilometres travelled, CO2 emissions in the cities, as well as delivery turnaround times and productivity at the construction site will be analysed amongst other factors, to allow for a viable business model for a consolidation centre to be put forward to each construction-site stakeholder.

A strong partnership

The project is coordinated by the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), which will have the expertise it has acquired over the past few years through numerous projects led in this field recognised at European level. Amongst these projects, "Last Mile Logistics" (LaMiLo) is a flagship project. Co-funded by the ERDF Interreg IV NWE programme, it unites 15 European partners whose objective is to make urban delivery more environmentally-friendly and efficient by drawing on new logistics practices..In particular, the project has developed a geographical information system (GIS) to optimise urban logistics.

Other partners in the SUCCESS project are the Association pour la Formation professionnelle dans les Transports (AFT, France), the Istituto sui Trasporti e la Logistica Fondazione (ITL, Italy), the Fundación de la Comunidad Valenciana para la Investición, Promoción y Estudiós Comerciales de Valenciaport (VPF, Spain), TRALUX Construction (TRA, Luxembourg), VINCI Construction France (VINCI, France), the Cooperativa Muratori e Braccianti di Carpi (CMB, Italy), the Federación Valenciana de Empresarios de la Construcción (FEVEC, Spain), the Emilia-Romagna region (RER, Italy), the Fundación para la Comunitat Valenciana para la Promoción Estratégica, el Desarollo y la Innovación Urbana (InnDEA, Spain), and UNIMORE (Italy).

This partnership is the strong point of SUCCESS, which unites research institutes and businesses in the construction domain around a shared challenge. In fact, each country is represented in the project by an institutional partner and a leading company in both the country concerned, and in Europe. This is undoubtedly one of the arguments brought to light in the selection of the SUCCESS project from amongst 767 project proposals submitted in response to the call for proposals, a highly competitive tender process in which only 8% of the proposals were shortlisted.

This strong partnership forecasts positive results with a long-term impact, and which will be ready to be used across all European countries.

>> For more information about SUCCESS, visit the project page

 

SUCCESS has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 633338.

 

 

Picture: Project partners - Luxembourgish construction site "Brasserie de Neudorf" managed by Tralux.

 

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