REBUS - Renovating Buildings Sustainably

REBUS is a partnership representing the whole value chain of the construction industry to ensure sustainable renovations for the benefit of users, industry, the environment, and the economy.


Solving the rebus of the construction industry
A fragmented value chain, unclear baselines and low productivity are some of the challenges that characterize renovations today. The industry needs new framework conditions, cooperation models, industrial solutions as well as holistic methods and tools for management and documentation. The societal partnership REBUS aims to solve this 'rebus' by bringing together the different parts in the value chain to address the barriers for innovation.

Societal partnership for sustainable renovation
REBUS stands for REnovating BUildings Sustainably and the unique, broad collaboration unites renovation with business and ambitious goals for productivity, energy and resource consumption. Generally, the project will ensure 50% less energy consumption after renovation, 30% less resource consumption during renovation and 20% higher productivity.

Strengthening the innovation force in renovations
High-quality and cost-efficient renovations require a change of the renovation process as a whole. With REBUS, the ambition is to develop solutions in three areas: 

  • Strategic organizational forms and framework conditions that ensure long-term development, flexibility and optimal logistics in a renovation project
  • Concepts for total value calculations with a high focus on health and indoor climate
  • Industrial technical solutions for configured facades and installations

The solutions are demonstrated in full-scale cases to show their potential. Valuable knowledge will be gathered along the way and eventually conveyed to the construction industry in general to contribute to innovation in the renovation area.

Social housing as case
The social housing sector in Denmark deals with major problems with maintenance. It is estimated that the maintenance loss will be 160 billion Danish kroner in the period 2006-2026. At the same time, there is a great opportunity to create holistic solutions due to the relative uniformity of the building mass and the structure of the building ownership. REBUS has appointed this building segment as a full-scale demonstration case. This requires close cooperation with building owners, who are also represented in the partnership.

Global demand for new renovation methods
Globally, there is a great demand for operational solutions for the renovation of multistory buildings from the 1960s to the 1970s. With a large renovation potential and structural similarity with buildings and markets in Europe, knowledge can be gathered in demonstration projects and transferred to other markets.

Wide support ensures anchoring
The partnership is widely supported by the Danish construction industry. The project partners regularly involve the industry and authorities to ensure anchoring. The advisory board represents the construction industry broadly with the members InnoBYG, BL – The Danish Social Housing Sector, Molio, Danish Energy, Nykredit, Realdania and Landowners Investment Fund. The authority group consists of the Danish Energy Agency, the Danish Transport, Construction and Housing Authority and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency.

The partners
Behind REBUS are some of Denmark's leading companies and knowledge institutions with a common goal to improve and innovate energy renovation. The partnership represents all parts of the industry’s value chain from technology development and consultants to end users and market. This provides a unique opportunity to go into depth and to develop advanced interdisciplinary solutions.

The budget is app. 81 mio. DKK. of which Innovation Fund invested 35 million. DKK. Realdania and Landowners Investment Fund invested 8 and 6 million. DKK specifically in the indoor climate sub-project, which is considered an important parameter in the overall solution. The rest is investments from the partners themselves.

The project partners are:

COWI A/S 

Danish Technological Insitute

Enemærke & Petersen A/S

Frederikshavn Housing Association

Henning Larsen A/S

Himmerland Housing Association

Saint-Gobain Denmark A/S

Technical University of Denmark (DTU)

Aalborg Universitet/SBI