Sitowise, the leading consulting company in building and infrastructure construction, intensified its cooperation with Maapörss because its goal is to expand its operations to online services. The company also wants to promote recycling in land construction.
Text: Kaisa Salminen
Photo: Seppo Närhi
Sitowise bought Maapörssi in November 2017. In the spring of the same year, a bigger arrangement also took place, when Sito and Wise Group merged to become Sitowiske.
Sito had already been building web-based transport services in cooperation with municipalities in the Mobility as a Service project.
For the construction industry, we would like to develop a similar circular economy platform to facilitate the recycling of soil materials.
"Together with the Maapörss and the municipalities, we are investigating what opportunities 5G and the Internet of Things could offer for this. In the future, the world will be very different; for example, we know exactly where construction machinery and loads are moving, as well as what soil materials they contain", director of circular economy in Sitowise Eija Ehrukainen vision.
Even closer to the future, the goal is to promote the utilization of surplus land from construction projects, such as clay, through concrete cooperation projects.
"Sitowise plans and supervises circular economy projects and applies for permits and makes Mara notifications. Maapörssi organizes masses for projects through its online service as needed. Our principle is openness, which means we basically accept masses from anyone", Ehrukainen illustrates the cooperation.
A recycling park in a phased provincial plan?
The first joint utilization site was found at the Sipoo shooting range, whose chaotic situation, in Ehrukainen's opinion, symbolizes the surplus situation in the capital region more broadly; there was so much supply of loose clay soils right away that the site had to be temporarily closed in the fall of 2017.
"The circular economy in land construction will only start working properly when there are enough sites like Sipoo. We are currently negotiating with several parties and I think that the construction industry is becoming more and more ready to think about alternative solutions. However, this problem cannot be solved with the help of individual projects, the utilization of soil materials must be planned already in the planning phase", he emphasizes.
"Now, for example, phased county plans have been made for waste management. Why not make a phase-county formula, in which both loamy and clayey soils would be treated at the same time? Why can't recycling parks be zoned, for example?"
Alliance model for a win-win situation?
Sitowise and Maapörssi cooperate with, among others, Vantaa, which has announced that it is a circular economy municipality. It means Vantaa project engineer Jukka Hietamienen including resource wisdom - that is, in practice, that 70 percent of the demolition material is recycled. In addition, mass balance has started to be invested in planning.
Vantaa's ambitious goal is to leave all the masses generated during construction near the construction area and use them, for example, in parks, yards and parking lots.
"It's no longer a good idea to take leftover soils to landfills, because they'll catch up after some time anyway. In addition, the intention is to start stabilizing soft rock with the by-products of waste incineration plants and industry," says Hietamies.
"The fact that Vantaa doesn't have its own land areas brings challenges. In addition, the private contractor wants to take the easily recyclable ores out of the planning area and leave the difficult-to-recycle clays there. It would make more sense if everyone benefited. In that sense, the alliance model could be well suited to circular economy planning projects."
Read more about the Sipoo shooting range renovation project >
The whole story was previously published in Infra magazine 1/2018
The magazine is a member benefit of INFRA members >
Sitowise is a cooperative member of INFRA