Siv Tallang-Vold, Environmental Manager at Betonmast, describes the simplification of the work involved in declaring building materials as a challenge that should have already been solved. Now, AI is set to tackle the issue. Photo: Betonmast.
"We can't manually read documentation on thousands of products per project. It's nearly impossible," explains Siv Tallang-Vold, Environmental Manager at Betonmast. The declaration of building materials concerning chemical content is a significant industry challenge. Now, it’s being resolved at record speed by AI.
The new BREEAM standard, version 6.0, which was introduced in 2022, sets even higher requirements for the documentation and declaration of the content of all products used in a building.
Betonmast had more than 5,000 documents without a standardized format, and the company’s existing system was unable to assess the content of these documents. This meant that human eyes had to manually go through the documentation for every single product and make the assessment.
“Timewise, this is simply not feasible,” explains Siv Tallang-Vold.
Now, the AI startup Findable has helped them gain an overview in record time.
"I am impressed and actually very proud," she says.
Time-consuming, complex, and prone to errors
The European chemical regulation REACH has listed over 200 environmentally harmful substances. Checking and documenting whether these substances are present in any products is a complex task. The information should be found in the product's Environmental Product Declaration, commonly known as an EPD.
“One thing is that the work is very time-consuming, but it also requires the right expertise,” explains Siv.
After expressing her frustrations at the office before Christmas, a colleague connected her with the AI startup, Findable. The task of declaring the products seemed almost insurmountable.
"First, you have to determine if information about the chemicals is even included in the documentation. Then, it has to be correctly interpreted and registered," she explains.
The Environmental Manager notes that there is a high risk of errors in this work. She describes it as a challenge that should have already been solved.
“This is something many people talk about, but haven’t quite managed to achieve,” she says.
Lack of systematics
One reason the work is so complex is that EPDs lack a standard format.
"The documentation comes in many different forms. There are various types of text, tables, and combinations with markers," explains Lars Aurdal, Co-Founder and Head of Research at Findable.
The lack of systematics presents technological challenges, which has been one of the biggest lessons for Betonmast.
“The biggest ‘aha’ moment is realizing just how complex this really is. It’s not just about feeding the documents into a system,” says Siv.
A week’s work in 10 minutes
Findable helps building owners, managers, and contractors gain full control of all their building documentation using artificial intelligence.
"You can imagine searching for ‘REACH’ in a PDF and trying to find the answer. That works fairly well. But what do you do when there are 10, 100, or 5,000 files?" asks Lars from Findable rhetorically.
Now, the startup has begun a collaboration with the construction contractor to solve a range of documentation-related issues.
"We were able to offer Betonmast a week’s worth of work in about 10 minutes," says Lars.
The Environmental Manager at Betonmast is pleased with the results of the collaboration so far and hopes that the work can contribute to progress in the industry.
"With Findable, we’ve managed to crack this challenge in record time. I’m truly impressed with the results," she says.
