At Reincarnate, we are working to develop the technical and social means to give new opportunities to buildings, construction products and materials — thus maximising their life cycle and determining if they are suitable for reuse. This will only be possible thanks to the work of the Reincarnate team, made up of 16 partners present in 8 countries. From leading research institutes and universities to highly acclaimed SMEs and large companies — with expertise in robotics, wearables, artificial intelligence (AI) and social sciences.

Through the “Behind Reincarnate” interview series we are introducing the great team behind our project. On this occasion, we have asked Timo Hartmann, Professor at the Technical University of Berlin (TUB), to tell us about his work as the coordinator of the project.  Take a look at what he has told us on this podcast or read it below:

Carmen: Hello everyone and welcome to this #ReincarnatePodcast. My name is Carmen Serna and today – in the Meet the Team Behind Reincarnate series – we are speaking with our Project Coordinator, Timo Hartmann, who is also a professor at the Technical University of Berlin in Germany.

 

Hello, Timo, how are you?

Timo: Hey, I am good. How are you doing?

Carmen: Fine, thank you very much! It is good to hear you! Thanks to be here with us. And then let us start from the beginning: who are you and what is your role at the Technical University of Berlin? For how long, for instance, have you been working there?

Timo I am Timo – that is easy to answer. I am a professor at the Technical University of Berlin – as you have already said – and I am chairing the Civil Systems Engineer Department.

What we tried to achieve is really to teach civil engineering students again that buildings and other types of structures are complex systems that you need to understand and design from many different perspectives, including many different stakeholders.

In our research, we mainly try to find better design methods, engineering methods, and engineering solutions – primarily digital – to support engineering work, particularly with the requirements and needs of civil engineering to solve the biggest problem we have – climate change.

Civil engineers need to mitigate the problems we already have because of climate change. But we also are one of the main contributors to CO2 globally.

Carmen: And now, how all of this is linked to the Reincarnate project? Can you explain the role you have, and you envision to play?

Timo: First, coordinating the Reincarnate project is also very important because it is really at the core of what we try to do.

Reincarnate is about developing a set of innovations that will help all engineering stakeholders in the supply chain process of buildings to use the possibilities of the circular economy. They can be used for buildings and infrastructures. We focused mainly on buildings, but can we use them longer, extending the life cycle? But can we reuse it somewhere else if things get to the end of the life cycle?

The construction industry is the most significant contributor to the waste in all industrial countries. But of course, we need to save the new material for them because producing these materials is very energy and resource-inefficient. That is why the project is significant, and we are happy we can coordinate it because it fits right into our strategy for the Department of Teaching and Research for the next 10 and 15 years.

The second question was more about the role of the project. Being coordinators is essential, but we should not be in the limelight. So, others would talk much more about their role. We will have several scientists – not me – working on the project to understand new non-destructive methods to understand the status of materials/products around buildings. And we will have scientists developing robotic solutions to upgrade building components.

Carmen: All right, so getting inside of the project, what are the expected results and outcomes that Reincarnate wants to achieve?

Timo: That is a big question. From our perspective of TUBerlin, we want to push the boundaries of the proven-based scientific understanding of how you can implement circular solutions supported by advanced technologies.

Our goal in the project is to provide evidence-based on demonstrations from our case studies. We have a lot of case studies on the project. They really show that if you approach the design and engineering project in that way – using this type of tools that we will all develop together on Reincarnate – then you can really leverage the potential of reusing and extending life cycles.

Carmen: Nice, and what are the main actions, activities – that you are working in the project – that you feel and are more excited about?

Timo: Now, I personally need to coordinate this. I am not sure whether I am super excited about this [laughs]. But it is a very important part, somebody needs to create the project environment.

There are a lot of partners on the project. Probably at one time we will have close to 100 people working on it – when you look across the project. Our role as coordinator first and foremost in creating the environment that all of these people – all these 100 people – can really, really innovate and work together and push the boundaries of creating new knowledge. And I think that is what we see our role as a coordinator, creating this creative and innovative environment.

Carmen Since you are working many years now in this sector, how do you see the future of construction? What are the main challenges that the sector is facing at the moment?

Timo: I have quite a good picture of the challenges. There are two problems here. The construction is the wrong word because most problems come from something other than the construction. The problem is more on the design and engineering.

One problem that influences construction is that we cannot provide construction with the information they need to build something. But the bigger problem is that designing and engineering take us too long. If we think about everyday projects, we usually have design and engineering cycles of 10 to 15 years. So, think about, for example, flood defence projects. So, we need from 10 to 15 years to design and engineer our fabric fences. Most of the cities will be overflown, looking at the rise of the sea level. We need to become significantly quicker in delivering design and engineering.

The second problem is we need to do a better job regarding quality. Our stuff holds up, but we sell them commission, any product that really works from the beginning. So, this is the only industry that has this. Other industries sometimes have quality problems, but that is different. Usually, they deliver something that works, and we do not. But that is only one aspect of the quality.

The big aspect of the quality is that our designs are terrible in terms of resource usage, terrible in terms of maintainability, terrible in terms of reusability, and terrible in terms of all types of lifecycle aspects. It is terrible how much carbon they embody, too. And so, we need to change the industry so that we can design and engineer faster and with much higher quality. And we can make some jumps towards that in Reincarnate.

But these are the big problems. When you ask me where the industry is moving, I am worried that we are not moving in the right direction. I see many good people and good companies that want to move. On the other hand, the external pressures will get bigger. So, we may have to change. But at the moment, I do not see much.

Carmen Okay. Having shared these challenges the sector is facing, what does Reincarnate bring new to this construction sector moving towards circularity?

Timo: Circularity is one part of quality design and engineering. So, I think Reincarnate hopefully can provide some new insights, tools, methods and also proven evidence based on best practices and how we can improve the quality of our designs concerning using less material, extending the life cycle of buildings and being able to reuse things that were used somewhere else. That is very important.

Together with the toolkit and the Circular Potential Information Management System that we want to develop, I hope that we can improve not only the quality but also the method-based approach, like a knowledge-based approach, and the time required to provide the designs.

I hope that to Reincarnate, we tackle some of the industry’s pressing needs and issues. One of the things we really need to achieve as a team is to disseminate this widely, spread the word, and motivate companies, people, and the industry to adopt these tools to move forward.

Carmen: Great! Very ambitious projects have been carried out to transform this sector and make it more sustainable. Do you know any that have inspired you?

Timo: There are many projects around. We just closed one project – BIMSpeed Project – where we also worked in a great team to look at energy efficient renovation. That was a very inspiring project.

I think the New European Bauhaus is very inspiring, if it is done right. So, we do not know that yet.

And there are always good examples and things that are nice and many, so it is hard to pinpoint.

Carmen: Okay. So, the next question, maybe it is a bit tricky but, in your opinion – as the coordinator – how can Reincarnate become one of these inspiring projects?

Timo: It already is. We have a great team. We have the right people together, the right organisations together. We have a great vision – what we want to achieve at Reincarnate. I think we have all the ingredients. As I said, I think – as a coordinator – we need to try to create the organisational environment and culture. It is much more not about structures, but it is about a culture in which everybody can really leverage their knowledge and innovative capacities on the project.

Carmen: And we also have 4 years ahead to demonstrate the value of the project and the impact that we want to achieve with it. Do you have previous experience managing coordinating European projects? What is the most rewarding thing about it? Feel free to share anecdotes!

Timo: We are quite a heavy coordinator. At the moment, we are coordinating three projects. My time is as a Professor and between teaching and supervising PhD students. And we have a significant research group of PhDs at the moment. I want to spend my time on things that have an impact.

Projects like this, where the industry comes together with academics and brings intelligent people together, can significantly impact how we move the industry forward to solve the problems we are discussing. That is my thing, why I do it.

Carmen: Cool! And this is more a curiosity, why the project name is Reincarnate. Actually, we are willing to hear, 3 things this word inspires in you. It can be linked to the project or not.

Timo: That is a good question. We know that “reincarnate” comes from some Asian philosophical thinking. I think – now we get into personal things – but Buddhism significantly influences me – the philosophy behind it, not the religion, but the philosophy.

But these are good ways to think of the virtues that you create during their lives will carry on. We also need to transfer this whole thinking to products and hard things. Buddhists believe that stones also have souls – in that sense. Humanism – the Western notion of humanism – created the idea that we are kind to people, which is excellent and friendly. Still, it also created a duality between people and material things. So, we are good with people but not good with material things. The material things should only support how we are good to people, and that is like deeply ingrained in our philosophy.

This philosophy is one of the biggest problems we have regarding problems such as global warming. I like the name Reincarnate because it allows us to think about how we should treat people; we should also treat our products. And if something works for a long time, it is a good product. So, let us not throw it out. And something new first needs to prove itself. So, let us stop buying a lot of new stuff and looking for stuff that works for the long term. And then think about how we can use it. And that is the name behind it.

Carmen: Amazing! And let us move to the last question of this short interview. To wrap up, just in one sentence, what is the key message that all reincarnate team members must put forward?

Timo: The main message?

Carmen: Yeah!

Timo: For me, there are two important things. First, we need to innovate, and we need to be super creative. And it can only work if we all have a lot of fun together on the project. Everybody in their way. That is it, then we will be successful!

Carmen: Great. So, thank you very much for your time and being here in this interview, so everyone can get to know more about the project Reincarnate!

Timo: All right. Thank you so much for the interview. Bye bye!

 


Do you want to learn more about Reincarnate and the team behind the project? Subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, so you don’t miss a thing!