Overview
Between 1970 and 2010, the share of people in Europe living in cities and towns grew from 50% to 72%. By 2050, 82% of the European population will be living in urban areas. This growing population increases the need for new infrastructure and the construction/reconstruction of buildings in cities.
The construction industry is not only one of the biggest freight transport ‘consumers’ in urban centers, but also one of the biggest ‘producers’: construction, despite the recent industry crisis, is still the economic backbone for all EU cities. The construction supply chain (CSC) is often fragmented, with many suppliers delivering to many different trade contractors on the same site in an urban area. The consequences include an increase in pollution, congestion, noise, accidents, degradation of infrastructure and of the quality of life, and the rise of transportation and production costs.
SUCCESS has chosen to target the construction industry as a major sector impacting on city logistics which has unexploited potential for improvement in the efficiency of goods, waste and service trips in EU cities, by addressing the challenges pinpointed by the European Commission and in particular by improving the understanding of urban freight and introducing more resource-efficient, environmentally-friendly, safer and seamless supply chain innovations.
The focus of the SUCCESS project is on reducing the negative impacts and cost of freight distribution in urban areas by improving the knowledge and understanding of freight distribution and service trips for the construction sector and by demonstrating the impacts in terms of transport and environmental efficiency. The project looks at to what extent and how the concepts of Supply Chain Management and Construction Consolidation Centres (CCCs) could bring about tested and replicable solutions (i.e. adequate collaborative frameworks and, as a result, sustainable business models) to address problems in the construction supply chain, focusing on distribution networks, construction sites and reverse logistics. Four construction sites located in Paris, Valencia, Verona and Luxembourg will provide case studies. Located in high-density urban areas with significant traffic congestion issues and certain environmental constraints, these pilot sites will allow for collection of the data required to devise suitable solutions, and put forward concrete demonstrators
The main objectives of the SUCCESS project are to improve construction logistics in urban areas from an operative and economic point of view, to gather relevant data from the four pilot sites in order to design optimised solutions and validate the results with stakeholders, and to understand the impacts of the use of CCCs on construction sites, distribution networks and reverse logistics. The project will also formulate a reliable and sustainable business model on the use of CCCs, optimisation and ICT tools, and stakeholder cooperation and share these at European and international level.