First up was a webinar on weighting climate in public procurement on January 30. It was attended by 32 people from municipalities, consultancy firms and construction companies. Eivind Selvig gave an introduction to the new requirement that climate must be weighted with a minimum of 30 percent in public tenders.
How should the requirement be practiced, and what do the new requirements mean for the construction sector? The public sector purchases goods for around NOK 740 billion a year (Statistics Norway 2023), and the climate footprint of these procurements is approximately 10.3 million tons of CO2 (Menon, 2023). Eivind showed various examples of how requirements and weighting can be designed, as well as a brief presentation of DFØ’s guide. You can watch a recording of the webinar here.
Kongsvinger: Climate-friendly buildings that lead the way
On January 31, 19 people met for a breakfast seminar at Sentrum VGS in Kongsvinger. Edward Aas, Sustainability Manager at ØM Fjeld, presented the BREEAM Outstanding project The Plus and four different forms of contract that the company has worked with in processes involving climate-friendly buildings. ØM Fjeld’s own conclusion was that the form of contract is set based on the criteria and requirements determined by the developer, and that cooperation and trust are crucial to achieving climate-friendly buildings.
The debate panel included Ole Gunnar Holen from Sør-Odal municipality, Anders Hauger from Arkitektlaget and Asgeir Kvam from Sweco. Together with the contractors, architects and consultants in attendance, there was discussion and exchange on the topic of reuse. “Today, it’s not clear how best to compare costs between building new and renovating. We need to get better at this, and we need some guides for the work.
A number of wishes emerged from the meeting; about rehabilitation, forms of construction, greenhouse gas calculations and climate planning in smaller construction projects. The participants clearly expressed that they wanted a local meeting place to discuss and further develop these topics and ideas.
Gjøvik: Sustainability in construction projects
22 people met for breakfast at NT6 in Gjøvik on February 7 to hear Tema Eiendom present its work on sustainability. The company owns 370,000 square meters of commercial buildings, mainly in Inland Norway, and manages existing buildings as well as developing new ones. Ingrid Lotterud is a sustainability manager with four months’ experience at Tema Eiendom, but is already well on her way to implementing the company’s sustainability strategy. “We’ve spent a lot of time mapping and looking at how we can work smarter and create more with fewer resources. The goal is for our sustainability strategy to be in place in the first quarter of this year,” she said.
Tema Eiendom presented Meieriet in Lillehammer, an older factory building that was rehabilitated with a strong focus on preserving the existing building stock. “The best decision we made was to choose rehabilitation over new construction. The building had a lot of good qualities, both a flexible building envelope and good load-bearing systems. In addition, this was a building from the 1950s that many people in the local area had a relationship with,” says project manager Kristian Kraabøl.
