Synergic Co-Benefits and Value of Digital Technology Enablers for Circular Management Models Across Value Chain Stakeholders in the Built Environment

Abstract

It is undeniable that digital technology enables, e.g., building information modelling, digital twins, extended reality (i.e., virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality), and automation, have recently played a significant role in the construction and engineering industry. The traditional applications of digital technologies include design and construction management, waste management, and, to a limited extent, asset management. Despite some applications of digital technologies, the technology users are often isolated and siloed. In reality, the cross-functional applications, roles, and co-benefits have not been thoroughly understood or well demonstrated. This is evident by a very limited usage of such technology across either the whole lifecycle or the value chain of built environment sectors. On this ground, this study is the first to tackle the challenges by conducting expert and stakeholder interviews using open-ended questionnaires both online and offline (n = 42) to identify synergic roles and influences, as well as co-benefits of digital technology enablers. Industry participants are dominant in our study and, unsurprisingly, siloed practice can undermine cross-collaboration among value chain stakeholders. Clearly, co-benefits may hypothetically occur, but they can be only unlocked by genuine, participative stakeholder engagement. This study is unprecedented, and our new findings also reveal technical and societal capabilities of digital technologies, which can inclusively enable participative decision-making, engagement, and integration of stakeholders for implementing buildings’ circularity through viable business and management models. New insights clearly exhibit that digital technology enablers must be co-created by main stakeholders in order to yield co-benefits and harvest synergic value for circular management models in the built environment.

1. Introduction

Transforming built environments to meet net zero targets requires urgent greener actions and strategies. With respect to the building sector, place-based complexity in building stocks within an urban environment makes fit-for-all governmental policies unrealistic and unpragmatic. In Europe, over 90% of building stocks are ageing, whilst only around 10% of buildings are new. This critical situation also exists globally [1,2]. This local factor adds to the complexity in green transition of the built environment. On this ground, new bespoke but scalable and actionable solutions are critical for successful transition. Figure 1 demonstrates complex stages across the whole lifecycle in relation to circular economy strategies and tactics applicable to both new and existing building stocks, as well as to infrastructures and assets within the built environment. These circular economy (CE) practices serve as pragmatic techniques or tactics to enable regenerative sustainability across value chain. Transforming CE strategies will require a digital platform to naturally convert ‘linear economy’ to become ‘regenerative circular economy’ (including extraction, production, use, reuse/recycling, and/or upcycling). The low adoption rate of digital technologies across stakeholders presents exhibit research questions into hidden barriers and whether co-benefits can genuinely be realised by stakeholders for circular business and management models.

In general, CE strategies are developed for particular assets or infrastructures to align with the European Circular Economy Action Plan’s [1,3,4,5] CE principles known as 10R principles, including R0 Refuse, R1 Redesign or Rethink, R2 Reduce, R3 Reuse, R4 Repair, R5 Refurbish, R6 Remanufacture, R7 Repurpose, R8 Recycle, and R9 Recover. These combined CE principles work together to co-create regenerative resources (i.e., materials and energy) and to minimise indirect environmental impacts including resource depletion, air, water, and land pollution, environmental toxicity, habitat disruption, and biodiversity loss. Circular practices will therefore reduce the demand for raw material extraction and will dramatically eliminate waste and associated greenhouse gas emissions.

Figure 2 highlights the complex interaction among stakeholders in each stage of lifecycle of the built environment. Many studies have shown that the successful implementation of CE practices can be enabled when supply chain actors and relevant multidisciplinary stakeholders are fully and transparently engaged [6,7,8,9]. Sustained CE adoption requires cross-party information sharing and intersectoral collaboration in order to scale up the green transition of complex built environments.

The most effective ecosystem to co-create a participatory platform among various stakeholders is the adoption of digital technology enablers, such as building information modelling (BIM), digital twins (DT), extended reality (i.e., virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR)), and automation [10,11,12]. Digital technology enablers can communicate and harmonise collaborative actions that will enhance stakeholder engagement, promote joint decision-making, and support viable business and circular management models for CE implementation [13,14,15,16]. However, most of the digital technology adoption is predominantly focused on construction management at early design stage. The rate of digital technology adoption in industry to facilitate CE strategies across the whole lifecycle is relatively scarce. This is due to the lack of understanding and knowledge of digital enablers by different stakeholders at different stages of lifecycle [17,18,19,20]. There is a knowledge gap in how to overcome the challenges in BIM adoption in industry and how to embrace the systems’ stakeholder integration across value chains. Most previous research findings focused on a single stage of lifecycle where adoption took place but could not fit other purposes or requirements by stakeholders in other stages of lifecycle. In this study, we aim to fill the gap by investigating the co-benefits and value of digital technology enablers as perceived by multidisciplinary stakeholders, in order to overcome complex challenges and barriers to implementing circular practices within the built environment sector.

2. Materials and Methods

In this study, the representative stakeholders across all value chains were invited to take part in closing the loop of supply and demand. The stakeholders were informed about the need to adopt digital technology enablers. Both academic and industrial actors’ involvement is mutually critical for the insights into circular business models (CBMs) and related co-benefits for CE practices. On this ground, this research adopts a quantitative survey approach using online questionnaires (together with via stakeholder interviews). The non-personal data was collected anonymously without withholding personal information. All respondents had given informed consent for data collection. The data requested in this study was collected and processed by the researchers in accordance with the provisions of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR). In this study, 42 respondents in total were collected between July and December 2024. Two real-world use cases of building information modelling (BIM) have been introduced to the participants to gauge the understanding into the co-benefits and value perceived by the stakeholders. Clear guidance has been provided to respondents, assuring anonymity to all to create a safe, fair, and inclusive environment.

2.1. Building Information Modelling (BIM)

BIM is a digital platform capable of collecting, creating, archiving, sharing, and managing cross-party data and information. Such information can establish 3D architectural model embracing full-scale physical dimensions. BIM is essential for construction, project management, monitoring, and operation of built environment during the whole lifecycle [19,20,21]. BIM can coordinate digital datasets where relevant stakeholders can access, visualise, and share the information. The system can embrace various stages of lifecycle including material production, manufacture, design, construction, and operation as well as any necessary information (e.g., documents or contracts related to the project). Any design modification or as-built change within BIM environment can be shared and visualised by relevant stakeholders across value and supply chains [22,23,24].

In recent years, BIM has been used as a basis to advance a digital twin. Its main goal is to underpin the role and influence of all stakeholders within a project and analyse the milestones and activities for design, construction, operation, and maintenance at the early stages. The outcome can provide benchmarking targets for economic, environmental, and social values of the assets. It is important to note that BIM is not just a 3D architectural model, but it connects with resources workflow and project delivery process. Based on the industry report [20], BIM adoption in the UK has been steadily increasing. However, the adoption is still for early design and construction stages and does not further yield benefits to other lifecycle stages.

According to new UK BIM standard, British asset owners/investors are required to maintain and update building information. This raises the importance of BIM and its associated skill training [12]. As shown in Figure 3, the evolution of BIM maturity can be directly related to stakeholders and lifecycle stages of an asset. BIM Level 1 will enable partial collaboration; BIM Level 2 will incorporate full collaboration; and BIM Level 3 onwards will yield full integration. This is the basis for digital technology enables with which multidisciplinary stakeholders can be transparently engaged. On this ground, data-driven and numerical modelling used by a specific stakeholder (e.g., structural damage modelling) cannot be considered as a digital enabler. In particular, BIM can be further evolved and upgraded to enhance additional cross-party capabilities for determining various KPIs and engaging several stakeholders and cross-functional parties to work collaboratively together and to exchange information in accordance with the BS Standard 19650-1 [19].

In our study, we adopt existing real-world use cases to communicate with our participants in order to gauge their understanding into the co-benefits and values of the digital technology enablers. The real-world use cases of BIM Level 3 include (i) King’s Cross railway station in London, UK, and (ii) an ageing residential building in Birmingham, UK. The use cases will be demonstrated in the following sections.

2.2. Demonstration I: 6D-BIM for King’s Cross Railway Station

Demonstration I, as illustrated in Figure 4, highlights a specific BIM application for carbon credit assessment of a landmark railway station building in London, UK. The interactive BIM has been built in real-scale 3D using Revit-based simulation for the reconstruction work of King’s Cross station in London, UK [25]. The 3D architectural BIM has been further modified by embedding additional King’s Cross station building information, resulting in a 6D BIM. Additional six dimensions of information include time and cost schedules, carbon emission calculation, and renovation assumptions within Revit workflows. Accordingly, economic and environmental impacts can be estimated in real time using an Application Programming Interface (API). Demonstration I’s outcome has already been used by relevant reconstruction stakeholders and asset owners. The information sharing and result visualisation between stakeholders can fully be integrated. The carbon footprint estimations in repair and maintenance stages can be determined in order to develop outsourced carbon offsetting. In addition, the 6D BIM also enables carbon credit calculations of future activities by estimating potential replacement tasks using low-carbon components and materials.

2.3. Demonstration II: 6D-BIM for Birmingham’s Ageing Residential Building

Demonstration II is a 6D BIM of an ageing residential building in Birmingham, UK, as illustrated in Figure 5. The 6D BIM shows its capabilities to assess technical and financial viability towards Net Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB) of an ‘existing’ building [26]. A number of viable options for NZEB solutions can be virtually assessed and validated within the BIM environment, whether they are suitable for a certain geographical area. The 6D-BIM can visualise a variety of NZEB options, promote data sharing and collaborative decision-making among stakeholders, and estimate associated costs and technical issues and risks with any NZEB solution in a pre-determined location. This case study also shows further 6D-BIM capabilities to assess benefit/cost of technologies for renewable energy to improve building energy efficiency.

2.4. Stakeholder Engagement

Our study has engaged relevant stakeholders across all value chain elements to participate in the expert interviews in order to ensure inclusive and integrated approach toward circularity. Our research adopts a quantitative survey approach using online questionnaires. The questionnaires were designed to initially obtain the perception of stakeholders in relation to the co-benefits, value, and effectiveness of BIM in driving circular management models more efficiently. The questions are open-ended and allow the respondents to rank the criticality or significance of the co-benefits perceived by them. The questions had been validated by asking circular economy experts in CircularB Action to provide feedback for improvement. The feedback was then adopted to update the questionnaires. We later used the questionnaires to ask the participants to rank the criticality of perceived values related to BIM in different stages of lifecycle. In addition, two real-world demonstration cases above were demonstrated and discussed. The open-ended questions were then used to assess the quality and co-benefits of BIM’s digital environment in order to improve stakeholder engagement, information sharing, and participatory conversations on different aspects and interests necessary to develop viable business model developments, value proposition, customer involvement, and supply chain management.

The results obtained can yield new insights, practical and actionable solutions, and scalable BIM applications. The new insights and tools can provide a digital monitoring tool for the co-benefits and values stemming from CE. BIM can help to trace and track CE performance indicators of circular business models. Our online surveys have been conducted globally and driven by various value chain stakeholders. It is important to note that we did not collect any personal data nor personal information. All respondents contacted for the research had been informed about the purpose of our study, and they had given informed consent for data collection upon the submission of the survey. The survey was based on expert interviews and processed by our researchers in accordance with the provisions of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (the General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR) and all other applicable EU and UK privacy and data protection legislation. Since the data was non-personalised, the ethical review was waived by the University of Birmingham’s IRB.

International experts (in both industry and academia) on circular economy were asked to provide responses. The respondents were selected from their involvements at different stages of lifecycle of building stocks. Data was collected anonymously and processed using statistical analyses (e.g., using spreadsheet, R, and Sankey analytics). As shown in Figure 6, 42 respondents in total have taken part in the study from across the globe. The role of stakeholders is diverse sufficiently to address the new insights across value chains. Note that most respondents’ role is based on design and construction stages of lifecycle. It is likely that the resultant co-benefits could be biassed towards the associated lifecycle stages. This reflects the limitation in our study where participants related to procurement, logistics, and end-of-life management are not well represented.

3. Results

Figure 7 presents the breakdown analysis of stakeholders involved in the study. Interpret and analyse the results. It is clear that stakeholders across value chains have been involved in the study. The main stakeholders include architects, design engineers, constructors, government and policymakers, procurement specialists and manufacturers, executive management, asset owners, investors and dwellers, suppliers, logistics teams, waste managers, and academic researchers. Two real-world case demos using 6D-BIM [25,26] have been introduced to participants to delve into the co-benefits of digital environments to enrich stakeholder engagement, enabling participative decision-making on different aspects and interests necessary to develop viable circular business and management models. Key questions are designed to draw new insights into value proposition, customer involvement, and supply chain management.

Figure 8 displays the complex role of respondents across all value chains and lifecycle stages. In our study, most of the respondents are in the industry sector (75%) and the rest are in academia (25%). In the industry sector, the majority are architects, design and construction professionals (22%), and asset owners and investors (20%). The stakeholders who are well linked with all stages of lifecycle are government bodies, local councils, policymakers, researchers and academics, as well as architects, engineers, and designers. We have found that constructors, fabricators, logistics teams, contractors, procurement teams, waste managers, and recycling teams are the stakeholders who have the lowest access to lifecycle stages. This implies that they may not be aware of the co-benefits across different value chains.

BIM has gained significant momentum in engineering, construction, and architecture for decades. It is a platform to collect, archive, share, and manage cross-party data and information with an agreeable level of details (LOD). However, current adoption in industry is limited to certain groups of stakeholders and to certain stages of lifecycle. Accordingly, we have conducted an international survey to investigate the BIM adoption and its capabilities across value chain and lifecycle stakeholders. The results illustrated in Figure 9 clearly reveal some insights into current adoption of digital technology enablers in practice. Most current data sharing within a firm or an organisation are still based on CAD drawings and blueprints, with some adoption of 3D architectural models and BIM. The results also demonstrate the co-benefits in stakeholder engagement, stakeholder integration, and participatory decision-making using digital technology enablers (DTEs). Synergic roles of DTEs for actionable and scalable solutions across different stakeholders can be observed. However, it is very clear that the CAD drawings and 3D architectural models are still the most used tools (58% in total) to share information with other teams.

The results illustrated in Figure 10 exhibit the effectiveness of digital technology enablers (DTEs) on stakeholder engagement, stakeholder integration, and participatory decision-making. It displays the participants’ perception related to the co-benefits and value of digital technology enablers across value chain stakeholders. Despite fewer BIM adoptions in practice, the respondents still understand the true value of BIM technologies (3D to 6D). They believe that digital technologies can significantly improve the quality of stakeholder engagement. Surprisingly, smart contracts and blockchain are not well considered to offer added value to key stakeholders across value chains.

Figure 11 and Figure 12 reveal the outcome of the co-benefits and value perceived by stakeholders. The real-world use cases of 6D BIM were demonstrated to them. However, our results show that the actual BIM applications to enrich circular value chain is still ineffective, particularly at the operations and end-of-life stages of lifecycle. It is apparent that it is necessary for every stakeholder to promote digital technology enablers that facilitate circular economy practices and stakeholder engagement towards sustainable asset management during both operations and end-of-life phases of lifecycle. Note that the lack of circular economy innovation for existing building stocks is one of the key observed trends derived from the respondents’ perception.

Figure 13 portrays the preference and expectation of the stakeholders on the roles, capabilities, and co-benefits of digital technology enablers (i.e., BIM technologies). Overall, stakeholders have substantial expectation on the ability of BIM technologies to help them visualise, engage, convince, and negotiate with their value chain clients or further downstream stakeholders. Figure 13a clearly shows that over 50% of respondents have high expectation on the ability of BIM technologies. About 10% of respondents did not believe in the application of BIM technologies for effective stakeholder engagement. Over 30% of respondents were indifferent about feasibility of BIM technologies to potentially help them with stakeholder engagement in their workplaces.

Figure 13b displays the expectation of stakeholders to deploy the BIM technologies beyond the current state of the art in their organisations. It is clear that a majority of stakeholders (over 70%) plan to further enhance the role and co-benefits of BIM technologies in the future. Very few (around 5%) respondents were unsure whether the capabilities of BIM technologies can be further exploited in their organisations. Around 20% of respondents stayed neutral regarding whether the exploitation can be further extended beyond the current practice in their workplaces.

4. Discussions

Our study has profoundly investigated the understanding, perception, and expectations of international participants who are a value chain stakeholder within the built environment sector. Most of the participants are in the industry sector (particularly in design, engineering, and construction), which enables us to thoroughly assess the representative level at large across the whole lifecycle. Interestingly, some initial interview responses reveal that some industry stakeholders lack thorough awareness about the level of BIM maturity. It is also very clear that many stakeholders are involved in only one stage of the lifecycle and may not take a role in other stages of the lifecycle. Only the government and local authorities have opportunities to make decisions on circular economy implementation across all stages of lifecycle. This implies that circular business and management models cannot be fully realised without a participative digital platform that can retain, share, and archive all activities, information, data, and previous decisions of assets, buildings, or the built environment. Note that circular business and management models require to determine benefits, costs, externalities (e.g., risks, hazards, environmental toxicity, collaboration), and other impacts (pros and cons) to every stakeholder in every stage of the lifecycle.

We demonstrated the technical capabilities of real-world use cases of 6D BIMs to participants in order to gauge the stakeholders’ responses towards potential co-benefits and values. The 6D BIMs were selected to showcase the fact that 6D-BIMs can be appliable to both new and existing building stocks. When the stakeholder participants were asked about the current state of practice, it was very clear that CAD drawings and hand-held documentation are currently dominant in the industry. Participants informed that current technologies to bring to the field (e.g., construction sites) are still limited. However, they believed that future tools (e.g., 3D PDFs or efficient software to facilitate multi-view drawings) will facilitate the ease of digital enablers in the field.

The low value perception of AI, blockchain, and smart contracts by certain stakeholders is notable. The stakeholders who least favour AI, blockchain, and smart contracts are homeowners, asset managers, suppliers of materials and components, researchers and scientists, asset owners, asset investors, and landlords, respectively. This is because some private-sector stakeholders (e.g., asset owners, investors, suppliers, etc.) do not foresee the synergic value and co-benefits of systems integration through AI, blockchain and smart contracts. In contrast, participants from the construction and government sectors including procurement, executives, constructors, logistics, and designers, strongly appreciate the potential to use AI, blockchain, and smart contracts.

Based on the survey, most stakeholders envisage the co-benefits, value, and effectiveness of the digital technology enablers as summarised in

Table 1. Summary of value chain co-benefits.

Co-Benefits	Stakeholders
Ease in production details Setting multi-level of details (LODs) for data exchange	Architects, Engineers, Designers Contract/procurement officers Manufacturing Engineers, Producers Suppliers of materials, parts, components
Comprehensive overview of the project details Visualisation Data sharing/integration Improved quality of work (breaking silos) Performance assessments (e.g., NZEB, smart cities, SBTs)	Architects, Engineers, Designers Contract/procurement officers Government, Local council, policymakers Constructors, Fabricators, Logistics staff Researchers, Academics, and/or Professional Associations CEO, Director, Administrators, Board Members
Participative design making Stakeholder integration Determining cross-party impacts and externalities (e.g., toxicity) KPI indicator reporting Product and material passports Lifecycle cost and sustainability assessments	Architects, Engineers, Designers Contract/procurement officers Government, Local council, policymakers Constructors, Fabricators, Logistics staff Researchers, Academics, and/or Professional Associations Residents, end users, owners, investors Waste managers, recycling teams CEO, Director, Administrators, Board Members

. Cross-value chain stakeholders coincidentally agree on the joint co-benefits that could benefit them at different stages of lifecycle.

The co-benefits across multiple stakeholders in Table 1 are also aligned with the responses from the participants when they were asked to identify the values and expected outcomes from the technology demonstrations provided. Key co-benefits mostly expected by most stakeholders are the lifecycle cost and sustainable assessment [27], and information modelling platforms (particularly for building information, energy efficiency, and product and material passports) [28]. Surprisingly, although some stakeholders indicate the value of AI, automation, blockchain, and cloud technology, most stakeholders did not feel that these technologies could help them to improve cross-disciplinary stakeholder engagement for circular economy implementation.

5. Conclusions

Traditional digital enablers such as CADs and 3D models have been widely adopted in the construction industry, predominantly in the architectural design and construction stage. The rate of adoption has not been penetrated across value chain stakeholders. This led to the research question into the awareness of co-benefits and values of digital technology enablers for circular business and management models. In fact, our preliminary results, derived from a technical workshop organised by the EU Cost Action CircularB, confirm that the role and effectiveness of traditional tools for stakeholder engagement, stakeholder integration, and participative decision-making are moderate. Through critical review and preliminary assessment, our study has therefore identified the innovation gap for stakeholder engagement. On this ground, this study has further conducted expert and stakeholder interviews to identify synergic role and co-benefits of advanced technology enablers (e.g., 3D to 6D BIMs, digital twins, immersive technology) for stakeholder engagements. In total, 42 global participants have participated to highlight the valorisation of digital enablers for stakeholder engagement. Although convergence of aggregate results was achieved after 30 participants, a limitation of the study exists due to the low representation of certain stakeholders in procurements, logistics, and waste management. Real-world use cases using 6D BIMs have been demonstrated to stakeholders who were involved in our study. The use cases address the applications of 6D BIMs to support participative decision-making towards circular business and management models of both new and existing building stocks. Our study is the first to exhibit that most stakeholders perceive the values and co-benefits of advanced digital enablers (particularly BIMs, material passports, digital twins, and immersive technology) to scale up circularity practices across all stages of lifecycle. In addition, our findings reveal strong influence of government and policymakers in enabling system integration using digital technology enablers throughout the whole lifecycle. Thus, it is recommended that the government and policymakers take on the critical role of facilitators, regulators, and promoters to help stakeholders across value chains adopt digital technologies that truly transform our built environments towards circularity and net zero. Future work will build on current state of the art of 6D-BIM to embrace the integration of artificial intelligence, place-based requirements/priorities, logistics, and genuine stakeholder engagement across value chain to derive net zero cities.