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Innovations

The future of the built environment is smart

Innovations and development are a significant part of our operations at Granlund Group. Our development work supports Granlund Group’s mission to create well-being for people, buildings and the environment.

Innovation supports long-term development of the construction and real estate sector

We participate in several national and international research and development projects as well as invest approximately 6% of turnover annually in development.

To support creating the future the of construction and real estate sector, we have a dedicated innovations department promoting long-term development at Granlund and creating networks between research organisations, customers and other actors in the field. Our current innovation themes are smart energy, digital twins, artificial intelligence and extended reality.

We believe in cooperation, and have participated in over ten EU projects and numerous national development projects over the years. We are also actively involved both nationally and internationally in many industry and R&D organisations, such as REHVA, ASHRAE, BuildingSmart, EAPPM, Building 2030 and Innovation platform.

We are actively involved in hackathons where new software solutions are innovated through teamwork and competition among experts from different fields. We have both created competition challenges for others to solve and participated in competitions with our own teams. This way, we can inspire students, young developers and our own innovators to solve the actual challenges of the construction and real estate sector.

We invest 6 % of turnover annually in innovation and development activities.

Our focus is on value creation and ecosystem lifecycle thinking

At Granlund Innovations, along with the development of technology, we put strong emphasis on how technology breakthroughs create value for our industry and support our overall company strategy. We work closely with our business units to give context and real applications to our innovations, but at the same we thrive being creative and explorative, finding new ways of doing things.

The ecosystem lifecycle approach enables us to consider the different stakeholders involved in the construction and real estate industry and to understand the impact of our innovations in a long-term and holistic way.

With this perspective, we apply different innovation processes, methodologies, and tools for evaluating our innovations based on desirability (human), viability (business) and feasibility (technology). In our innovation projects, we use agile thinking, intended collaboration and bold experimentation as core principles. We strongly believe that people are the key factor in the success of our innovation projects.

THESES

Theses and doctoral dissertations ensure the development of expertise

Theses play a key role in our innovation activities. We encourage people to write theses and reward the best every year. Dozens of studies ranging from bachelor’s theses to doctoral dissertations are completed each year at Granlund. We also offer interesting work and research opportunities to PhDs, and we currently have more than ten of them working with us.

Our innovation themes: smart energy, digital twins, AI, and XR

smart energy

Smart energy

With our research projects, we have promoted smart energy in many ways. We have developed simulation and optimisation tools for design phase, hybrid energy solutions for both individual buildings and neighborhoods, demand responses to limit energy use during peak hours, analytics to optimise building operations and visualisation tools to encourage building users to save energy.

Digital twins

Digital Twins

Digital Twins have a wide range of applications in the built environment. Our innovation team researches different use cases and implements the most recent technologies to develop and represent Digital Twins in our industry.

AI

Artificial intelligence

AI offers several possibilities, from automating routine tasks to finding anomalies in large datasets and forecasting the future. We apply AI to real estate and construction applications and help our customers to utilise the benefits of artificial intelligence.

XR

Extended reality

We believe that XR will have a stronger role in all phases of construction projects in the future. Our goal is learning, understanding and researching the potential applications of XR and how it can deliver tangible value to our industry.

E3

The E3, Excellence in Pandemic Response and Enterprise Solutions Co-Innovation project is one of the largest joint projects between companies and research institutes ever funded by Business Finland. The goal is to find research-based solutions to prevent the spreading of viruses. 

Our goal is to develop new smart and modular pandemic safe solutions for healthcare. This includes effective and innovative concepts for smart modular, scalable and movable healthcare, EPCM (Engineering Procurement and Construction Management contract) based models for new constructions and renovations, safe and digital operation in healthcare and solutions for various modular hospital spaces.

Would you like to know more about our innovations? Contact us

Heikki Ihasalo

Heikki Ihasalo

Director, Innovation and Development
Granlund Group

Francisco Forns-Samso

Director of Digital Business Design
Granlund Oy

Read more about our innovations

The building services sector is transformed by innovating together

25.01.2023 – Granlund’s new Innovation Director Heikki Ihasalo considers the renewal of the building services sector to be inevitable. Operating methods change…

News

Innovation Director Heikki Ihasalo: “Innovation is needed throughout the entire lifecycle of a building”

03.01.2023 – Heikki Ihasalo, who started as Granlund’s Innovation Director in January, emphasises the importance of joint work and willingness in the…

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Granlund acquires Lean 4D to take construction project scheduling to the next level

14.01.2022 – The aim is to take the data-based scheduling and cost control of construction projects to a completely new level and…

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An IC room module as a solution to the coronavirus crisis

09.04.2020 – Granlund’s hospital design and Inoroom have developed an intensive care room module.

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