As the current urbanization trend puts pressure on city development, there is a need to manage transport to and from a construction site more efficiently, as well as materials handling on-site. Why is this important?
Well, the facts* are clear:
- 50% of urban goods transport (weight) in Sweden are construction-related
- 10% of CO2 emissions in a construction householding projects are transport related
- Urban areas will continue to be under constant development
These facts were presented at a very educational final conference of the MIMIC project, a JPI Urban Europe project with partners from Belgium, Norway, Austria, and Sweden. This project aims to demonstrate how smart governance concepts can be used to aid in the construction and city planning processes, facilitating and supporting logistics to, from, and on urban construction sites. This is needed to improve mobility and reduce congestion within cities and thereby reduce the negative impact of construction sites on the surrounding community.
Current construction logistics not optimized with city logistics in mind
It seems most construction projects are run as silos with 3 phases: pre-production, ongoing production, and during use. One approach that is often used is to employ Construction Logistics Setups (CSL) in order to face three challenges: management of transport to and from construction sites, management of logistics at construction sites, and managing the interorganizational relationships amongst construction project stakeholders.