Life cycle-thinking at social housing organizations: beyond the pilot | HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht

Structural implementation of life cycle-thinking (considering the impact of the entire life cycle of dwellings on the environment, residents, and production chain) is difficult for social housing organizations. Pilots are carried out, but it ends there. This project focuses on determining important barriers and enablers and detecting a possible solution.

The project aims to elicit an internal conversation among representants f all organizational layers about life cycle thinking within three social housing organizations, because we expect the lack of this conversation to be an important barrier. We will therefore design an “internal dialogue tool” based on group discussions and individual interviews.

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In contrast to current research within the construction domain, a broader dialogue
is required about the implications of the life cycle thinking of social housing
organizations.
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Within the consortium of social housing organizations, chain partners, and experts, we elicit (based on group and individual interviews, n=12) a dialogue between project leader, asset manager, management and / or policy or strategy officer and finance about the consequences of life cycle-thinking on the internal organization. We then design a prototype for an internal dialogue tool that we will test both in a final group dialogue and with students from the Master of Urban and Area Development.

1. learning and awareness-raising process among employees from different hierarchical layers of social housing organisations about life-cycle thinking;
2. visualization of the complexity of life cycle-thinking within social housing organizations;
3. networking and needs assessment for starting up a larger project;
4. prototype of a dialogue tool enabling social housing organizations to initiate an internal dialogue on life-cycle thinking.

01 December 2020 - 30 November 2021