I4.0 revolution is permeating every technical sector, by promoting deployment of enabling technologies (ETs), also in the facility management (FM) discipline. As FM regards the integration of processes within an organization to support activities, it is clear how ETs can trigger, in the FM area, significant innovations like a better failure knowledge management and a sustainable use of resources. More specifically, the implementation in building maintenance of dynamic systems, linked to sensors networks, can allow changes into knowledge management and FM decision-making processes. Starting from these premises, the paper deals with an ongoing research, whose aim is to investigate how ETs may innovate the traditional maintenance strategies with new approaches in corrective, condition-based and predetermined maintenance. According to the above, building maintenance, which is traditionally reactive, may actually become proactive if failure management policy is set. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how ETs adoption may promote innovation in FM processes focusing on maintenance in service equipment field. More specifically, an operative and methodological framework for reaching proactive maintenance is described through the support of a case study concerning two major healthcare infrastructures in Italy, managed by a major FM company.

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The construction sector has evolved a lot over the last few years promoting the design and manufacturing of innovative and environmentally sustainable materials and products. In accordance with European and national guidelines, with a growing awareness of environmental issues several experiences are showing the interest of companies to qualify their products as green and environmentally sustainable. In the European context many directives have been introduced which, among their themes, speak of circular economy, reduction of the use of resources, better efficiency of production, etc. At the same time, initiatives related to the GPP were activated in the Italian context, that foresee an increase of the recycled content in building materials. Especially the brick manufacturing industry is very sensitive to the issue of the waste recovery and many experiences show that is possible to obtain optimum products with weighted material mixes (virgin raw materials and secondary raw materials). This procedure also contributes to a gradual recovery of waste otherwise disposed of in landfills. In the international scenario there are many studies about the reuse of waste and scraps in the bricks material mixes; the studies mainly derive from heterogeneous sectors as, for example: fly ash from coal plants, scraps and waste from the natural stone extraction, ceramic production residue, aggregates from demolition, waste oil, slag from steel mills, sawmill sludge and dust, glass powdered, recycled plastic, textile fibers, etc. The analysis of many experiences highlighted two key issues: the importance of cross-sectorial exchanges as a condition for enabling strategies of circular economy and the high intrinsic value of the material scrap. Particular attention has been paid to the Catalyst case study, a company that has developed different types of bricks, produced almost entirely with secondary raw material.

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The European Commission has introduced a whole range of policies and initiatives to promote the product eco-innovation and the environmental impacts reductions. One of the key topic for the reduction of the environmental impacts is the waste recycling and reuse (turning waste into useful resources). A teamwork of Politecnico di Milano has developed a research work, still ongoing and continuously updated, called "The usefulness of the useless. Cross-sectorial evaluation of waste in construction" which regards the possible reuse of pre-consumer scrapes/waste, deriving from various sectors, as secondary raw materials for the supply chains of the building sector. The goals of research work are the identification of the chains with high production of pre-consumer waste and scraps, the classification of these wastes by typology, the definition of scenarios for the reuse/valorization of the identified waste and the improvement of the environmental profile of products through an integration of recycled content. The research starts from the study of the most significant supply chains inside various sectors, analyzing the input/output and defining typologies and characteristics of waste/scrapes. To simplify the identification of recycling scenarios, the supply chains and related typologies of scraps have been classified according to a typical Italian filing system code. Then the data have been collected in a matrix used to identify feasible strategies and scenarios for the valorization of waste (this represent the first result of the work). The same matrix is also useful for public and private stakeholders for pursuing strategies aiming to the generation of positive externalities, at local and at global level. The next step is the proposal of new products deriving from the waste/scraps collected during the first phase.