Please tell our readers about your role and your professional interest in Level(s)

I am a professor and Head of the Institute of Sustainability in Civil Engineering (INaB) at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. I am also a founding member of a consultancy called Circular.srl in Italy. I was part of the first working group to develop Level(s) with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, as INaB was involved in road-testing the framework. Today I promote Level(s) on my courses and among professionals.

How does Level(s) feature in your university teaching?

Most of my courses focus on life cycle assessments and sustainability assessments. For example, the Sustainability Assessment in Buildings lecture focuses on civil engineering in the building sector. Here we cover the Environmental Product Declaration according to the EN 15804 theory and practices in building certification schemes such as DGNB and we have a segment on Level(s). Next year we plan to go further by dedicating half of this lecture to Level(s) and by adding some practical exercises.

What’s your experience of using Level(s) so far?

My students are quite satisfied with the methodology and I hope they will be the professionals leading this topic in future. Level(s) is very important for driving construction professionals and construction in general towards better sustainability performance, and it can be useful for defining benchmarks for buildings in terms of environmental, comfort and life cycle costs. Of course, there is a need for data and training at a professional level. As adoption of Level(s) increases we will start to have practical examples that we can share, to show how Level(s) can be integrated into building projects with the help of databases and tools. This would be particularly valuable for experts and students focused on the building design phase. 

Do you have plans to use Level(s) in future?

I would like to use Level(s) on a project to build a new church or for retrofitting a hotel in Italy, where I come from. I will keep you informed if one of the two projects is approved! I would be happy to organise events in Germany and Italy to further present the framework.