The University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland FHNW School of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geomatics is expanding its own expertise in the areas of digital and sustainable construction. To this end, she has set up two new professorships, which will be filled by experts with a high level of practical relevance and great innovative strength.
Focus on digital construction: information management
At the Digital Building Institute, which was newly founded in 2018 and has been growing rapidly since then, Lukas Schildknecht will take up the post of professor for digital building with a focus on information management from May 1, 2022. The environmental engineer and computer scientist has been a research assistant and lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences for Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geomatics and at the Digital Building Institute for five years. As head of the research product area, he built up the project acquisition and research activities of the still young institute and, among other things, managed a wide variety of projects on building information management issues on behalf of public and private partners. In his new function, he will continue to be part of the institute’s management and will focus even more on the management of complex data systems. «I am particularly interested in the interdisciplinary interfaces between information technologies and (digital) building models. Here we need solutions that are compatible in practice, for example through good integration platforms for harmonizing heterogeneous data sources,” says Schildknecht. With the introduction of BIM, the construction industry is currently going through technological and methodological developments that took place in other industries more than ten years ago. It is therefore time to transfer the knowledge that has been established in this way and to specify it for the construction industry without having to reinvent the wheel.
Focus on sustainable construction: life cycle assessments in construction
In addition to the digitization of the construction industry, the demand for sustainable construction processes is also gaining in importance for the University of Applied Sciences FHNW. The Institute for Sustainability and Energy in Construction, which was realigned two years ago and headed by Barbara Sintzel, is therefore occupying a topic area that is important for the construction transition in Switzerland with a new professorship: that of life cycle assessment.
For this position, the university was able to hire the expert for sustainable building and life cycle assessments, Daniel Kellenberger. The cultural and environmental engineer was most recently a member of the management board and head of the “Climate Protection and Energy Management” division of the interdisciplinary research and consulting company Intep and, among other things, worked on the development of the internationally renowned eco-balance database Ecoinvent. With his new position as professor for sustainable construction with a focus on life cycle assessments in the construction industry, he is striving to establish the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geomatics FHNW as a competence center for life cycle assessments in the construction industry. «In the past few decades, there has been very successful research into the energy-efficient and climate-friendly operation of real estate. However, the implementation often takes place without considering the gray energy and corresponding greenhouse gas emissions. However, a consistent net-zero strategy is only successful if the construction and building materials industry also makes a contribution. With life cycle assessments, we have an important tool at hand for this,” says Kellenberger. He will take up the position on November 2, 2022.
Ruedi Hofer, Director of the FHNW School of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geomatics, is pleased about the competent addition and explains: “With these two positions, our university has taken another big step towards a digitally supported and sustainably built environment. I’m proud of the great success of the institutes at our university and I’m happy that our work is able to promote both training and further education as well as research on important future topics in the construction industry”.
