Circular Procurement in the Construction Industry

Di Wu is a PhD researcher at the Department of Management in the Built Environment (MBE) of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft. She works under the supervision of Prof.dr.ir Vincent Gruis, Prof.dr. Paul Chan, and dr. Tong Wang. She is interested in the circular transition in the built environment and focuses on the integration of circular economy with the construction procurement process to facilitate circular transition. In this video, Di introduces the notion of Circular Procurement. She then describes the seven stages of Circular Procurement and their critical components.

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Main Takeaways

  • Circular procurement is the procurement process of circular solutions. It relates to how an organization anchors its circular ambitions in business processes, puts them on the market, and implements interactions with the market and supply chain partners internally and externally.
  • Circular construction procurement can be divided into seven phases: Planning, Criteria Specification, Tendering and Selection, Contracting, Designing, Realization, and Evaluation.
  • The critical components of Circular Procurement are: Selection Criteria, Contracting Methods, Measurement Tools for Circular Performance, and New Stakeholders and New Roles for Existing Stakeholders

Further Reading

  • EIT Climate-KIC. (2019). The challenges and potential of circular procurements in public construction projects. https://www.climate-kic.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Procurements-in-Public-Construction.pdf. Accessed 20 March 2023
  • Housing Europe. (2022). Circular renovation in affordable housing. https://www.housingeurope.eu/file/1109/download. Accessed 20 March 2023
  • (2017). Rapid Circular Contracting. https://www.pianoo.nl/sites/default/files/documents/gerelateerd/fs_40-rcc_-_rapid_circular_contracting_-_innovatie_gericht_circulair_inkopen.pdf. Accessed 20 March 2023
  • Platform CB’23. (2021). Circulair inkopen. https://platformcb23.nl/images/leidraden/Platform_CB23_Leidraad_Circulair-Inkopen_versie1.pdf. Accessed 20 March 2023

Author

Di Wu
Di Wu
PhD Researcher

Di Wu holds a MSc from the Eindhoven University of Technology and a BSc from the Beijing University of Technology. In the past she worked as an intern at the Beijing Institute of Architecture Design and China’s National Engineering Research Centre for Human Settlements. Besides her theoretical research, she puts a lot of effort into empirical research with industry partners to explore and tackle problems in the real world.  

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Circularity for Educators

The platform is intended to provide with content on either circularity or pedagogy for and about circularity. It is one of the outcomes of the Circular Impulse Initiative (CII), a project intending to enhance the integration of circularity in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment education. The platform mainly aims to help tutors get better acquainted with circularity in the built environment by providing a series of resources on this subject that they can either view to get better informed or directly share with their students in class or online. A large number of the Faculty's professors and researchers have contributed substantially both in creating a coherent narrative for circularity in the built environment as well as further elaborating on different aspects of it. Besides this one, a new platform for interaction and direct exchange was also established in parallel that we call ‘Educators for Circularity‘. This one offers the opportunity for all of us to meet and share our experiences and learn from one another.

Visit Educators for Circularity