Chile chose Gothenburg to see sustainable building

The Chilean Chamber of Construction (CChC) is very active at the international scene and often visits other countries for inspiration and new business contacts. This time, they selected Sweden and Gothenburg for inspiration and business contacts during a week long study tour in Northern Europe.

CChC is situated in Santiago, the capital of Chile, and their mission is to support the construction activity in the country. Along with the delegation from the Chamber, also came companies within architecture, cement and construction.

The main focus was to show innovative projects in Gothenburg and they visited HSB Living Lab, Riksbyggen Viva House, Johanneberg Science Park, the City Planning Office as well as Business Region Göteborg. They also had the chance to experience the ElectriCity project by visiting the indoor bus station and by taking the emission-free bus no. 55.

Smart Cities

One part was to learn about how Europe will co-create smart sustainable cities and examples from the EU-project ’IRIS Smart Cities’ was given;

“Smart cities throughout Europe demonstrate solutions contributing to solve the global sustainability goals. We match non-European cities fostering smart city ambitions with the smart cities in our network”, says Ulrika Wahlström, Innovation project manager, IMCG.

Co-working is the key

Miguel Perez, Vice President of CChC, tells us that the goal is to transfer innovative technologies and experiences from construction companies to the counter parts of Chile.

“Thanks to the institutions that have received us, we have been able to identify large projects and innovations that Sweden is developing for our sector“, says mr. Perez.

One of the important challenges that CChC have as constructors, is to advance the digitalization of work processes. This will help us to improve productivity that nowadays is diminished due to increased building costs.

“We managed to see a great project of the Municipality of Gothenburg where work permits is administrated digitally. Without a doubt, we will follow up on this and see if there are opportunities to apply it in Chile.”

Furthermore the Vice President tells us;

”We are really surprised how the institutions have managed to understand that through innovation everything is improved and the only way to advance quickly in this area is the co-working. This message that was given to us in all the meetings and regardless of whether they were public, private or academic organizations.”