Building passports and material inventories – concepts, trends, job sharing

The real estate industry is motivated to contribute to a more sustainable built environment. To meet future sustainability goals, building owners and other decision makers rely on high-quality building-related data. On the one hand, possibilities to collect, access and exchange data improve constantly due to developments in information technology. On the other hand, the task to manage data as a growing and versatile resource becomes more difficult. To overcome resulting challenges, the use of building passports, that can serve as a life cycle data repository for single buildings, can be very useful. The importance of building passports is more and more recognised within the industry, but there is an ongoing discussion about their original function. For this reason, the contribution firstly explains the origins of building passports and how the concept has evolved over time. Furthermore, the following research questions are addressed: (1) What are the main goals, functions and requirements of building passports? (2) Which current developments are related to building passports and how do specific concepts differ? (3) How can a job-sharing with other instruments like material passports be realised and what are the benefits? The research focuses on the situation in Germany considering developments on EU level.