To reduce the environmental impact of the construction sector, sustainable strategies for managing the in-use phase of buildings must be integrated urgently. Current green certifications present several limitations and, in particular, do not help determine where to focus for reducing the environmental demand of buildings. Among existing indicators, the ecological footprint (EF) is the most useful for assessing the buildings’ environmental performance through impact sources that reveal the over-consumption of resources. The present paper expands EF by taking into account the role of human behavior in over-consumption, and thus the efficiency in buildings’ use. After comparing ecological footprint with the existing green certifications, the paper demonstrates how a new integrated ecological footprint assessment can describe the impact of built-up, energy consumption, water consumption, material consumption, food and drink, mobility, waste generation, recycling potential, and occupants in the environmental efficiency of a building. The application of a case study demonstrates the reliability and the effectiveness of the model and shows that the estimated ecological deficit reflects not only the consumption of energy and materials, but also the behaviors of building users. This highlights the need for integrating a sustainable culture in the users of buildings.

The current scenario of the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operation (AECO) industry outlines an accelerating approach to digitalisation which is defined PropTech (abbreviation for Property Technologies). Among all the digital innovation brought to AECO, PropTech companies are introducing digital technologies in the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) phase of the building lifecycle to improve operational efficiency, performance of an asset, and effectiveness of provided services and supplies. Analysing the literature scenario of O&M phase, Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Digital Twin (DT) have resulted in a methodological innovation for the entire industry. Thanks to Internet of Things (IoT), the advent of DT makes its way into the building sector allowing among all to monitor the as-is conditions, detect anomalies before they occur, make diagnosis, and give an added value with respect to the BIM. Although DT is in its early stages, in the real estate market, some PropTech companies have embraced the challenge and applied the digital technology for building management. Therefore, the paper aims to analyse the numerous advantages of DT in the management of buildings. For this objective, the authors referred to two case studies, taken from the Italian PropTech Network ecosystem, that implement DT in management of O&M phase. On one hand the authors present the benefits of facility management digitalisation introduced by DT; on the other, they underline the issues faced by the two companies and the future implementations of DT in the O&M field.

The spectrum of innovation in the Architecture-Engineering-Construction-Operation (AECO) industry is called PropTech (abbreviation for Property-Technology). PropTech uses digital technologies to improve the products and processes of the construction and real estate industry over the whole building life cycle. However, PropTech applications are not extensively adopted yet, as many established companies are still doubtful about the added value of a digital transition, which encompasses significant investments. This reluctancy might be due to a lack of evidence about the benefits of technology adoption. Therefore, the present study aims to outline the advantages of adopting digital technology in building management by analysing two case studies that can be considered good practices of an effective investment made possible by PropTech. Netix Controls developed a centralized system based on Machine Learning (ML), to collect and integrate data from different manufacturer chillers, fire alarms, and lighting systems, and applied it to two separate networks of 77 and 14 buildings, respectively, which correspond to the two cases under analysis in this paper. Through desktop data and interviews the study analyses economic costs, environmental impact, and users’ well-being of the two cases and compares them ideally to a fictional case, which does not include ML but only traditional Facility Management (FM) procedures. In conclusion, the advantages of embracing innovation in FM through digital technologies are outlined. In particular, the potential will be discussed of predictive maintenance, and the prospective implications of real-time building management expanded at district and city scale.

The construction sector is one of the main sources of environmental degradation in the world. Data demonstrates that commercial assets are the most intensive consumers of resources. Among those, the largest amount of buildings’ emissions comes from office building operations. Buildings’ impact on the environment does not depend only on energy and material consumptions; but several studies demonstrate that sustainable savings could be achieved through occupants’ trainings. To develop a model for assessing the sustainable performance of office buildings which accounts also for occupants’ behavior, authors worked with the Real Estate Center of Politecnico di Milano and the Joint Research Center PropTech of Fondazione Politecnico di Milano. Through this cooperation, a tool is under development that: Assesses the quantity of space needed by organizations, based on the employees’ ways of working; and Evaluates how much space occupancy and utilization may influence the sustainable performances of office buildings. This paper describes the general functioning of the tool and looks at the contribution that PropTechs (Properties Technologies) can give to its implementation. Even if PropTechs are introducing digitalization in several real estate processes, few of them are focusing on the environmental. This study reviews the existing Italian PropTechs and selects those that could add value to the proposed tool. The analysis allows to define strengths and limits of the existing tools, helpful for implementing a new tool based on real needs of building managers. The tool aims to reduce the environmental impact of office buildings by suggesting more sustainable and user-oriented strategies.