Changing practices of built environment professionals to face sustainability challenge. Analysis of two Scandinavian case studies

Although innovation in the built environment industry occurs more frequently than generally assumed, the industry is not well positioned to face sustainability challenges and increasingly strict regulation. Current practices suffer from fragmented decision-making, scarce incentive to follow up projects outcome, lack of consideration of the involved stakeholders’ needs and low interest to design the building as a “whole system”. Despite this, relatively few studies reported about how skills, practices and know-how are used to meet the challenges faced by the built environment industry. Starting from the analysis of two cases in Scandinavia, the paper addresses this research gap to identify new professional trends in the built environment industry. A first case study focuses on the role of architects to stress the importance of communication and negotiation in the implementation of a systemic and holistic development project. A second case study describes a networking initiative involving built environment actors, energy professionals and local government aimed at increasing professional competences and promoting energy efficiency renovations in buildings. From this standpoint, the diffusion of innovation in the built environment industry depends on the capacity of actors of transferring knowledge, interacting and communicating with one another. Emerging trends and awareness within building professionals include more attention towards communication, following up, monitoring and actors involvement.