Among the thirty speakers scheduled for the congress, there are the leading experts in each subject, those with the most advanced knowledge of them, such as Thomas Winterstetter, CEO of Werner Sobek engineering, who is coming to Spain for the first time. Winterstetter is an expert in the design and construction of structures and envelopes that are as light as possible, in a way that favours lower energy consumption and, therefore, a more sustainable building. Winterstetter will open the congress talking about sustainability in construction, in a conference led by the technical architect Rafa Capdevila, a benchmark in the use of BIM, spearheading the relationship between construction and its digital transition from the project. Also on the Level(s) or mechanisms of control, measurement and comparison of sustainability to account for CO2, will speak Núria Matarrodona, general director of Architecture and Urban Agenda of MITMA; and the Chilean architect from ArchiKubik Spain, Carmen Santana, who will explain her experience in creating an Eco-quartier in Paris. The debate will be led by Dolores Huerta, general director of GBCe (Green Building Council Spain), who recently presented a decarbonization roadmap.
In the field of the industrialization of construction, Juan Carlos Cabrero, director of the Industrialized Construction Technician Specialist course at the Colegio Oficial de Aparejadores y Arquitectos Técnicos de Madrid (COAATM), stands out as a specialist in the subject. Cabrero will lead the presentation by Mark Farmer, author of an influential 2016 independent government review of the UK construction labor model.
In relation to the digital transition process in construction and the connectivity of what is known as the Internet of Things, Sergio Muñoz, a telecommunications engineer who is coordinating an inter-ministerial commission in Spain on BIM and chairing buildingSMART Spain; will lead the presentations by Javier Mora, from the International Center for Numerical Methods in Engineering (CIMNE), who will talk about virtual reality and augmented reality in construction; and Jesús Ángel García, a member of the Spanish Construction Technology Platform (PTEC) who last year presented a report on how the digital transition should be made in construction in Spain.
To discuss other forms of construction, speakers such as the Argentine Franco Luis Vietti, an expert engineer in modular construction, ecological technologies and the off-site building manufacture, Luis Fernández, president of the OCH-Offsite Construction Hub Spain, and Ignasi Cubiñá, a reference in the Cradle-to-cradle concept and now at the C-level of the construction company Construcía.
On energy renovation of housing, EBS Barcelona will feature presentations by Julián Domínguez, an expert architect in energy rehabilitation on a large urban scale (entire neighborhoods). And, among other speakers and topics (materials, digital platforms, circular construction…), the congress will feature, among others, Belén Palao from Madrid, an expert in circular construction from Arup global engineering, Olivier Lépinoy, strategic consultant for Autodesk, one of the most important construction software companies; Begoña López, an expert in the creation and start-up of factories for industrialized construction, and Sergio Baragaño, creator of the start-up Room 2030 that manufactures homes and hotels with three-dimensional modules.
With the two days of presentations and practical sessions, the European Building Summit Barcelona aims to “stimulate the sector to leave behind an obsolete and unsustainable form of construction and move towards digitization, industrialization and energy efficiency of the building stock”, remarks Rafael Capdevila, director of EBS Barcelona. But to make it possible, the sector also requires “legislative changes, new regulations and training for professionals adapted to the new needs of Construction 4.0”.
