Smart steel: new paradigms for the reuse of steel enabled by digital tracking and modelling

Abstract

This paper is predicated on the premise that the efficient reuse of high embodied energy materials will increasingly become a major requirement in both commercial and political decision making. Coincidental with this shift in political / commercial reasoning is a series of technologies both established and emerging which, if used judiciously, could underpin a transformation in the way the steel industry interacts with the wider architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector, necessarily affecting its existing business models. The various technological advances outlined in this paper coupled with the centuries old tradition of steel manufacture provides a synergetic environment in which a potential new paradigm of sophisticated reuse could operate. Utilising their durable nature, structural steel components lend themselves to being disassembled, taken back and reused. This paper argues that these processes can be facilitated by digital tracking and modelling, reconfigured into a cohesive system to improve the current low level of reuse of steel components. It examines how Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology coupled with Building Information Modelling (BIM) may enable components and assemblies to be tracked and imported into virtual models for new buildings. The added introduction of stress sensors to components provides the capability of knowing the stress properties of steel over its working life, another considerable advantage in assessing an element for its reuse. Such new technologies and new operating environment necessarily require new paradigms in which to operate. Therefore, new opportunities for business models such as product-service systems (PSS), that maximise profit centres, would evolve. This new environment would offer the potential to improve resource efficiency in many areas of production and consumption by enabling the take-back, reconfiguring and reuse of products. A likely scenario could be a company that currently manufactures and ‘sells’ steel may become a 'reseller' of reused steel and provide a 'steel service', retaining ownership of the steel over its lifetime. This is facilitated by its ownership of the database that enables it to know the whereabouts of steel, to be able to understand, license and warranty its properties and appropriateness for reuse in certain applications, and to redirect the components to other locations by means of ‘virtual auctions', taking into account criteria such as travel distance, energy/carbon emissions and financial cost.